


The Flowers in their Hair

by gothgirlnexdoor



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: AU TIME!!!, F/M, M/M, Sakura Petal!AU, i probably forgot a character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 02:17:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13777593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothgirlnexdoor/pseuds/gothgirlnexdoor
Summary: "A few more minutes passed by. The girl didn’t move, not even a centimeter.A crunching sound crept up in front of the girl. It sounded like someone approaching her. She looked up, hoping it was Leon. But instead it was another boy, wearing some sort of Yutaka, dreadlocks decorated with what seemed like not-yet-bloomed flowers. His pale green eyes matched with the green color that was tinting his cheeks and nose, white freckles were spread across as well.[...]The moment she came back from the kitchen, she could not believe what she was witnessing. One of the dolls was floating around, making small noises that sounded like a mix of squeaking and small bells. It stopped in front of one of the windows. The young woman was surprised that she didn’t drop her tea and the food she had prepared for herself."





	1. Petal Boy and Flowersound

**Author's Note:**

> Wow that title sounds deep  
> So, for those who don't follow me on Instagram/Danganronpa Amino, I've made an AU called the "Sakura Petal!Au".
> 
> Basically, Yasuhiro, Hiroko and Sakura are "Sakura people" (I know, not a creative name, but eh)  
> They're magical beings that live in a forest in a hidden village.  
> The story is mostly centered around Yasu and Hiroko though.

Sobbing echoed through the bright pink Sakura forest. Two kids went to play hide and seek. But while searching for the other, one of the kids tripped and scrapped her knee. She wandered around for a bit, crying, before realizing that she was lost. This made her cry even more.  
“L-LEON!”, she sobbed, “W-WHERE ARE YOUUU?!”  
Her voice cracked from all the yelling.  
“... W-WAAAAAHH!”, the tears wouldn’t stop anytime soon.  
A few more minutes passed by. The girl didn’t move, not even a centimeter.  
A crunching sound creeped up in front of the girl. It sounded like someone approaching her. She looked up, hoping it was Leon. But instead it was another boy, wearing some sort of Yutaka, dreadlocks decorated with what seemed like not-yet-bloomed flowers. His pale green eyes matched with the green color that was tinting his cheeks and nose, white freckles were spread across as well.  
“What’s wrong?”, he asked the crying kid.  
“I-I’m lost.”, she sniffled, “I c-can’t find my Big Brother.”  
“Oh! Maybe I can help ya!”, the boy smiled.  
“You can?”, the girl slowly stopped crying, wiping away some remaining tears from her face.  
“Yup! Where do ya gotta go?”  
“Back to the city.”  
“City?!”, the strange boy tensed up.  
“Yeah.”  
“Are ya a human?”, he took a small step back.  
“Yes...?”  
“Ah... We’re not allowed to talk to humans... But yer hurt...”  
The boy quickly looked around, checking his surroundings.  
“Okay, hop onto my back, I’ll bring ya to the city.”, he then suggested.  
“Really?“  
“Yeah, yeah, we just gotta be quick.”, the boy turned around and waited for the girl to get on his back.

“What are ya wearing on yer feet?”, the two have been wandering through the forest for a few minutes.  
“My shoes...?”, the girl answered confused.  
“What are those for?”  
“You don’t know what shoes are for?”  
The boy, the girl named him “Petal Boy”, was barefoot. But the young female thought it was because he was playing in the woods without shoes. She didn’t expect him to not know what those are.  
“No.”  
“Well, uhm... I guess they protect your feet from sharp objects and dirt.”  
“Weird.”  
It was quiet again. Ignoring Petal Boy’s footsteps on the dead leaves and the small breeze that went through the treetops.  
“Why do you have flowers in your hair?”, the girl then asked out if curiosity.  
“I was born with them.”  
“Really? So the green in your face is also real?”, she poked his cheek.  
“Yeah! But my mom said my face and my eyes turn pink once my flowers bloom! It still takes a while though...”  
“KANON!”, another kid’s voice echoed through the forest.  
“Ah! That’s my Big Brother!”, the girl exclaimed.  
Petal Boy stopped walking.  
“I’ll drop ya here than if that’s alright. I can’t let any more humans see me.”, he dropped her carefully.  
“Thank you for helping me!”  
“No problem, Flowersound!”  
Before Kanon could question her new nickname, Petal Boy ran away.  
“Kanon!”, a boy, about Kanon’s age, with red hair and blue eyes, ran towards Kanon.  
“Leon!”, she tackle-hugged her Big Brother.  
“Where have you been?”  
“Sorry! I got lost!”  
“You also hurt yourself!”, Leon pointed at Kanon’s knee after they broke the hug, “Let’s go home.”, Leon grabbed his Little Sister’s hand and guided her home.


	2. Floating Dolls

“I’m glad when I’m finally home.”, the young woman thought out loud while walking past several shops. She went out to get some groceries, although she didn’t expect everything to be so full.  
“Hm?”, the clacking noise of her shoes stopped the moment she stood still.  
“What are...”, she spotted two things on the ground. It seemed like those things were some sort of dolls. They were mostly pink, both of them having a single Sakura flower in their hair. Speaking of hair, one doll had very long light pink hair, while the other had shorter brown hair.  
“A kid must have dropped them.”, she carefully picked the two dolls up and looked around if she can spot a crying kid. She asked the shopkeeper nearby if they had seen some kid who dropped those. They denied it.  
“Strange...”, the woman decided to take the dolls with her. She’d be trying to find out who the owner was in the peace of her home.

She carefully put the dolls on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa to find out what kind of dolls these things were. She had never seen them before. She opened her laptop and started searching once it turned on.  
However, after a good amount of searching, the young adult came to no result.  
“They must be self made or something.”, she concluded. She then sighed.  
“I need a snack.”, she stood up and walked towards the kitchen, leaving the dolls alone.

The moment she came back from the kitchen, she could not believe what she was witnessing. One of the dolls was floating around, making small noises that sounded like a mix of squeaking and small bells. It stopped in front of one of the windows. The young woman was surprised that she didn’t drop her tea and the food she had prepared for herself.  
“I will just-”, she walked around the floating doll as if it was a spider. She then placed her food on the coffee table next to the other doll. Although she was questioning if those things even were children’s toys.  
The one floating, it was the “doll” with the brown hair, stood still and stared at the young woman. At least that’s what it looked like.  
“....”, the woman stared back, “.... You don’t wanna eat me or something, right?”, she then asked the creature. It let out a squeaky noise. Sounded like a “no”.  
The woman took a deep breath.  
“Okay, Kanon, don’t freak out.”, she told herself.  
Suddenly a strong wind, accompanied by what seemed like pink petals, rushed through the living room.  
Kanon hid her face behind her arms. After a few seconds the wind stopped.  
“What just-“  
“Flowersound!”, within a second, Kanon was embraced by a tight hug from a random guy.  
“Wait, whoa-“, Kanon was completely perplex on what was happening to her.  
“I’m so happy to see ya again!”, the other person, where ever he came from, broke the hug, looking at Kanon with a bright smile on his face.  
Kanon needed a moment to collect herself.  
“Are ya okay? Ya remember me right?”, the man waited for a response.  
“Wait...” Kanon analyzed the other. He looked like the creature that was floating around before. He had Sakura flowers in his hair, pink eyes and a pink tint on his nose and cheeks, decorated with white freckles.  
“Petal Boy!”, Kanon then remembered.  
“Huh?”  
“You helped me out of the forest!”  
“Yes! But what’s with that name...?”  
“You never told me yours.”  
“Oh.”, the grown up Petal Boy scratched his neck, “It’s Yasuhiro.”  
“Okay.”, Kanon nodded to signal that she understood, “... Where did you come from though?!”  
“What do ya mean? I’ve been here the entire time!”, Yasuhiro pointed at the other creature laying on the table.  
“You were the small doll thing?!”  
“Yup!”, Yasuhiro walked towards the coffee table, knelt down and poked the small creature.  
“Hey mom, ya good?”, after a few seconds of provocation the same wind as before rushed through the room.  
Suddenly a grown woman sat on Kanon’s sofa. Good thing that it wasn’t the table, otherwise Kanon’s food and tea would have been history.“Hmmmm.”, she stretched her entire body, “That feels nice.”  
“Mom?”  
“Hm?”, Hiro’s mother put her attention to her son, although she quickly noticed the unfamiliar environment she was in.  
“Where are we? Is that a human?”, she pointed at Kanon.  
“Yup.”, Hiro answered.  
“I will fight ya if I have to.”, the mom immediately threatened.  
“Mom, calm down, we’re safe!”, Yasuhiro tried to calm her down before leaning a bit closer to Kanon.  
“We are safe here, right?”, he then whispered. Kanon nodded.  
“Ya are aware that we’re not allowed to trust humans, right?”, Hiro’s mom objected, “How are ya so sure that she won’t do anythin’ bad to us?”  
“Uh...”, Yasuhiro avoided any eye contact by looking to the side.  
“I owe him!”, Kanon interfered.  
“What?”, the mother raised an eyebrow.  
“What?!”, Yasuhiro nervously looked at Kanon.  
“Yeah! Yasu saved my life about ten years ago!”  
“Flowersound, yer a bit exaggeratin’-“  
“I had a really bad injury on my leg, see?”, Kanon presented her knee that had a small scar, “He carried me back to my brother!”  
“...”, the mother glared at her son, “Did ya really do that?”  
“Yeeeaaahhh...?”  
She continued to stare before breaking into a chuckle.  
“Ya have a big heart, sweetie.”, the woman stood up from the sofa bowed in front of Kanon.  
“I’m Hiroko.”, she then introduced herself, “Sorry if I was a bit suspicious.”  
“Ah, it’s okay. I know you are not supposed to interact with humans. Although I don’t really understand why.”, Kanon mentioned.“Every time one of us interacted with a human, something bad happened to them.”, Hiroko explained, “That’s why we are not supposed to show ourselves to you.”  
“That sounds awful.”  
“It is.”  
“Okay, but what brought you here then?”  
Neither of the two magical visitors gave an answer. Both of them locked their gaze at the ground, a sad expression present in their faces.  
“What... happened?”, Kanon asked carefully, looking back and forth between the two.  
“Usually, humans don’t find our village.”, Yasuhiro started to explain, “But... some did.”  
“We basically left everything behind and ran away.”, Hiroko commented, “It’s probably completely destroyed by now.”  
“Wait, did those humans start to destroy your home?!”, Kanon asked, to make sure if she got the hints. Yasuhiro and Hiroko nodded.  
“I- I am so sorry.”, Kanon covered her of-shock-open mouth with her hand.  
Hiroko was clearly holding back tears, Yasuhiro wasn’t able to look at either of the women.  
“Do... Do you have any plans on what you’re going to do now?”, Kanon broke the silence.  
“Not really.”, Hiro answered quietly.  
“You can stay here if you need to.”  
The magical creatures both looked at Kanon with hope in their eyes.  
“Really?! Are ya really okay with that?”, Hiro stepped closer to the human, closing their distance to a few centimeters.  
“Y-Yeah-!”, a blush crept up on Kanon’s cheeks, “I mean, I live alone in this huge house. I don’t even know why I bought it in the first place-”  
“Bought..?”, the mother-son-duo thought out loud.  
“-so I’m totally fine with you guys staying here.”, Kanon finished her sentence. She didn’t seem to have noticed.  
“Thank you so much!”, Yasuhiro gave Kanon a big, tight hug. He then quickly broke it, Kanon wasn’t even able to properly hug back.  
“But what is this “bought”-thing you were talking about?”, he then asked.  
“Like buying things? With money?”  
“What’s money?”  
Kanon was one of the few fortunate people to be born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her father was filthy rich, buying her everything she wanted, accompanied by an extra high monthly allowance. He even bought multiple houses for her to manage as a landlord, so she had a stable income, now that she was a grown up. She was aware that there are people that weren’t as lucky as her. But the idea of someone not knowing what money was was just so strange to her, it had a certain shock factor to it.  
“It’s, uh-“, Kanon didn’t know where to start. Explaining money wasn’t as easy as explaining shoes.  
“It’s like. Paper and coins you exchange for goods? I guess?”  
“Coins?”  
“You don’t know what coins are as well?!”  
Yasuhiro shrugged sheepishly.  
Kanon knew she had a lot of explaining to do.  
“Oh, hey.”, Hiro pointed at Kanon’s feet. The manager looked down.  
“Yer not wearin’ shoes.”, he then said.  
“You don’t usually wear shoes indoors. Well, you can, but I don’t do that in my own home.”  
“What are shoes?”, Hiroko interrupted the conversation.  
“Things that protect your feet from sharp objects and dirt.”, Hiro proudly explained.  
“Weird.”, Hiroko commented, “But how come ya know?”  
“Flowersound explained it to me back then!”  
“Alright, uhm-“, Kanon interfered, “How about you let me eat my food and I’ll answer your questions later. Do you guys wanna eat too or is that something you don’t do?”  
“Of course we eat.”, Hiro told Kanon.  
“Okay. What exactly?”  
“Everything nature has to offer.”  
“Like... Fruits? Veggies? ... Rice, I guess?”  
“Yeah.”  
“That’s it?”  
“Pretty much. We also drink water, tea, and fruit juice.”  
“I figured. Uhm. I guess I can chop up something for you.”, the manager walked back to the kitchen.

It’s been a few hours since the newfound commune had dinner. A lot of questions were asked. Like what that giant rectangular thing was that showed miniature humans inside. Hiro was concerned that those were actual tiny humans trapped behind a glass wall. But Kanon reassured him that it’s not like that. It was just her flat screen TV playing some shows.  
Of course Hiro and Hiroko didn’t know what a “show” was either.  
Both of them jumped a bit when Kanon turned on the light. The magical beings were confused on how Kanon was able to create light. And, well, “electricity” was also an alien concept to the two new housemates.  
“At least tell me you know what a bed is.”, Kanon prayed, standing in front of a closed door to a guest room. Fortunately, the mother and the son nodded.  
“Thank god...”, Kanon sighed relieved, opening the door.  
“So-“, she stepped aside to let the other two properly peek in, “- one of you can stay here while the other gets an different room. Unless you want to share a room, I don’t care. The other guest room would be right next door.”  
“This looks so different...”, Hiroko was the first one to step in. She looked around and examined the furniture.   
“I’ll just leave you be.”  
Kanon left the two alone to go to her own bedroom.


	3. Humans are stupid like that

The manager wasn’t able to sleep at all. Not that she wasn’t tired, she was basically yawning every few minutes. The reason for her sleepless time was footsteps outside of her room. At first she tried to ignore it, since it was save to assume that it’s not a burglar who tried to steal her belongings.  
But it was getting annoying. Kanon wasn’t used to live with other people anymore. The last time she lived with someone was with her parents.  
Kanon gave up and decided to check what was going on. She opened the bedroom door and was greeted with .... nothing. The footsteps also stopped.  
“Weird.”, Kanon closed the door behind her and turned on the light. It was blinding for a second since Kanon was used to the dark, but she wasn’t the only one. A squeak came up behind a potted plant.  
“Aha!”, the young woman walked up to the potted plant and kneeled down. She looked behind the plant and found one of the small doll-like creatures she had found on the streets hours ago. It was Yasuhiro, rubbing his eyes.  
“That actually looks really adorable.”, Kanon thought out loud while carefully picking up the tiny figure.  
Hiro stopped rubbing his eyes, looking up to face Kanon. He didn’t look quite happy though.  
“What’s the matter?”, Kanon asked while carefully patting Hiro’s head with one finger. He didn’t seem to mind that extra attention.  
“Hm... Maybe I should let you transform back into the human sized version of you.”, she then put Hiro on the ground so he was able to transform back. Again, the wind with the petals appeared and a few seconds later an adult man stood in front of the manager.  
“I’m really worried about our village and all the others, y’know?”, he then admitted, “I usually take walks when I can’t sleep. But I’m too scared to leave yer home.”  
“Understandable.”  
“Sorry I woke ya up.”  
“You didn’t. I was awake the entire time.”  
“Oh. Also, your plant is thirsty.”, Yasuhiro pointed at the potted plant he hid behind mere minutes ago.  
“... You can talk to plants?”  
“In my tiny form, yeah.”

After a trip to the kitchen to get the thirsty plant some water, the two night owls decided to move their conversation to the living room.  
“What exactly happened to your village?”, Kanon asked while leaning back on the sofa.  
“I... don’t really remember exactly what happened. It was all so fast, y’know?”, Hiro fumbled with his fingers, “It started out as a peaceful day but suddenly there were humans with weird... metal things? I’ve never seen those things before, but they were powerful enough to cut through wood, and they were extremely loud. Everyone was screamin’ out of fear. We transformed and flew away. When mom and I reached the city we were so exhausted that we just fell into a deep sleep.”  
“That’s why I thought you two were dolls. You didn’t move a millimeter.”  
“Mhm. I’m pretty sure our village is history. But that’s not really the problem, ya can always rebuild it. I’m more concerned about the others. Where they are and if they’re alright.”  
Kanon tried to think of what Yasuhiro could mean with “loud metal things that can cut through wood”. The first thing that crossed her mind was chainsaws. She then connected those to an article she read online about two or three months ago.  
“Hm...”, she slowly fell into deep thoughts instead of comforting Yasuhiro.  
“Do ya think they’re after us?”, Kanon’s trial of thought was interrupted by a question Hiro had asked.  
“I don’t think so... Let me look up something real quick.”, she got up and walked out of the living room, “I’ll be right back!”, she yelled.  
A few moments later Kanon came back with a laptop in her hands. She sat down, opened the portable computer and pressed the on-button.  
“What’s that?”, Hiro asked.  
“A laptop. No time to explain though.”, the moment the laptop was completely turned on, Kanon opened an internet browser and looked for the article. She typed in the name of the forest the village was located in and got a few results.  
“Alright...”, she clicked on a link and quickly flew over the text.  
“That’s the one!”, she then exclaimed.  
“What do ya mean?”  
“Okay look. About a year ago, a group of people announced a new project they want to work on.”, Kanon started explaining, “The group is called “Towa Group”. You understand that?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Good. Those guys aren’t really good people. For the project, they need to get rid of the forest you guys live in.  
“They want to destroy the entire forest?!”  
“Wait, I’m not done yet. The forest technically belongs to our city. So Towa Group has no rights to do anything there. They’ve been in the news a few months ago for leaked information about their plans to start cutting down the trees and stuff. They probably got across your village and thought they should destroy that first.”  
“But why?”  
“For the money, probably. Money is something that can easily corrupt people.”  
“But... yer not corrupted, right?”  
“No. I’m fine with what I get. But there are people out there that want more and more. The thing is, they did this illegally. Meaning that they are guilty of a crime and therefore need to be punished for that.”  
“I don’t even know what “illegally” and “crime” is. But it sounds bad if it’s something punishable.”  
“It is. But it won’t be punished if it’s not reported to the right people.”  
Kanon let out a sigh.  
“To punish those people, we need to expose you though. Humans would find out who you are and will never leave you alone.”  
“Really?”, Yasuhiro gave Kanon a concerned look. She nodded.  
“Humans are stupid like that. Your fear isn’t really without reason. Although, I may have an alternative idea that wouldn’t be causing such a big fuss about your village.”  
“Ya do?!”, the magical creature gained some hope again.  
“Yeah! But if I explained everything to you, you wouldn’t understand half of what I’m saying.”  
“Okay... Is there a downside to this?”  
“Well, I have to tell a handful of people about you. You have to trust me on this.”  
“Wait, do ya want me to make a choice?!”, Hiro clearly felt pressured.  
“You and Hiroko are the only ones who can give me an answer right now. But Hiroko isn’t the one who’s siting right next to me.”  
Yasuhiro didn’t know what to do. He wanted to save his village, but what would the others think of he told them another human was responsible for saving them? In his mind, the usually peaceful villagers suddenly turned into dark, abandoning creatures. For the first time in his life, Yasuhiro was scared of his own people.  
“I-I don’t know?!”, he cried, “I feel like the others would hate us for bringin’ more people into this!”  
“Yasu, calm down!”, Kanon grabbed the other ones shoulder, “Take some deep breaths!”  
He did what the human girl told him to do.  
„Please trust me.”, Kanon begged.  
Hiro closed his eyes, took another breath, and nodded. “I trust ya.”, he whispered.


	4. People with Face Paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aka "The return of the Kaomojis"

It was the next day, the magical beings were sitting on the sofa, watching a nature documentary Kanon had put on for them. She thought they might want to see what other parts of the world looked like.  
She stood in the kitchen, grabbed her phone and started texting someone.

>heyyyyy big bro （＾◇＾）

It took a few seconds for the other one to reply.

•hey lil sis  
>u free to call?? (｡･ω･｡)

Instead of getting an answer through text, the other person decided to call instead. Kanon picked up.  
“Hey Leon!”  
“What’s the matter?”  
“Okay so like, that one friend of yours? Mondo?”  
“Yeah? What’s with him?”  
“Is he still dating Kiyotaka?”  
“Kanon, what are you on about? You wanna hit on Mondo now or what?”  
“What? No! He’s not my type. Listen, Kiyotaka is studying politics ‘n’ law stuff, right?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Good. And his dad is a police man?”  
“I swear to god, if you’re somehow involved in somethin’ illegal, Imma get over there and whoop your ass.”  
“I’m not, don’t worry. I just need help. Do you think you could get Taka and his dad over here? And only those two?”  
“Uh, I guess? Can you tell me why though?”  
“I’ll explain it once you guys are here. Don’t tell your girlfriend or Mondo though!”  
“Sayaka’s in the music store anyways, don’t worry about it. I’ll see what I can do.”  
“Thanks Leon, you’re the best!”, she then hung up.  
Kanon turned around to see what her housemates were up to. She didn’t have to walk far since both of them had been watching her from the doorframe the entire time.  
“Didn’t you know it was impolite to spy on others like that?”  
“We were just wonderin’ who you were talkin’ to.”, Hiroko explained.  
“Oh, I was talking with this.”, Kanon held up her phone.  
“A mini TV?”, Yasuhiro asked, tilting his head.  
“No, that’s a phone. But I guess you can watch shows on it too. What I just did was making a phone call. Which means if I press one of those names-“, Kanon showed her list of contacts, “- it will call that person on their phone.”  
“Whoa...”, it was really cute to see two fully grown up people being so fascinated by something so unspectacular. To Kanon it was, at least.  
“By the way, how long have you been listening?”, the manager put her phone in her pants pocket.  
“When you mentioned that Mondo person.”, Hiroko confessed.  
“That’s basically the entire conversation I had with Leon. The only thing you missed was me greeting him. But let me explain what’s going to happen now.”, Kanon pushed the other two back to the living room and gestured that they should sit back down on the sofa. She decided to kneel in front of the coffee table, facing the magical beings.  
“Alright. So. If everything is according to plan, we will get three visitors soon. Hopefully later today.”  
“Three more humans?”, Hiroko asked.  
“Yes. My big brother, a friend of his and the father of said friend.”  
“Why?”  
“Because they could help us with saving your village.”

Kanon received a text from Leon saying that he was on his way and that he had Kiyotaka and his father with him.  
The manager quickly prepared a small afternoon snack for the three men to enjoy once they arrived. She set the table in the dining room. Which was a useless room for the most part, considering Kanon usually ate in the living room while watching TV. But it comes in handy when people come to visit.  
Speaking of which, the doorbell rang. Kanon quickly ran up to the front door and opened it with a smile.  
“Hey Lil Sis!”, she was greeted by the first person. A young man with red hair, pale blue eyes, a goatee and a few piercings.  
“Hi Big Brother!”, she gave him a big, embracing hug.  
After the two broke the hug, Kanon let the other two visitors in, bowing a bit to properly greet them.  
“Please join me in the dining room!”, Kanon pointed in the direction the room was located.

“So, what are we here for?”, Leon grabbed one of the cookies Kanon had prepared. Her and her visitors had sat down on one of the many chairs the dining room had to offer.  
“Alright. It’s... pretty weird what I’m about to tell you.”, the manager immediately started, “And this entire thing needs to be a secret. It’s already bad enough I got three more people involved.”  
“I don’t like where this is goin’...”, Leon thought out loud.  
“Can I trust you that you will keep everything I’m about to tell you, to yourself?”, Kanon glared at the three men.  
“Well, we don’t even know what’s going on.”, a young man with raven black hair and piercing red eyes exclaimed.  
“I will tell you if you promise me to keep it a secret. Don’t make me whip out a contract you have to sign to keep your mouths shut.”  
“You wrote a contract?”, Leon looked at his little sister with a confused look.  
“I wasn’t the “Ultimate Sports Manager” at Hope’s Peak for nothing. So?”  
The three visitors looked at each other for a minute before nodding in agreement.  
“Okay.”, Kanon took a quick breath, “Our city’s forest can’t be destroyed without permission, right Kiyotaka?”  
“Yes.”, the raven haired man agreed, “It belongs to the city. But getting a permission is hard to accomplish, since the forest is under protection. The only trees that get cut are usually the ones that cause danger to the people living close to it.”  
“Perfect. Theoretically, if there was a secret village no one knew of, where would that belong to?”  
“A secret village?”, Kiyotaka asked, to be safe he understood correctly.  
“Yes.”  
“Uhm. I’m not sure, to be completely honest. It depends. When was the village founded?”  
“Let’s say a really, really long time ago.”  
“Before our city was built?”  
“Yes.”  
“Hm. Well, it’s either it’s own thing or it’s part of the forest.”  
“Let’s say it’s a part of the forest. Destroying the village would also be against the law then, right?”  
“Theoretically speaking, yes. But going out and destroying a village in itself is a crime, it doesn’t matter if it belongs to the forest or not.”  
“Where is this leading to, Miss Nakajima?”, the third man, Kiyotaka’s father Takaaki, interrupted the conversation.  
“There is a village in the forest that has been destroyed. My speculation would be that it has something to do with Towa Group.”  
“There actually is a village? Do you have any proof?”  
“I do.”, Kanon stood, “Living proof, if you will.”  
She then left the room.  
A few moments passed and Kanon came back with Yasuhiro and Hiroko following her.  
“Flower kid?”, Leon asked with a surprised undertone.  
“Hey, it’s you!”, Yasuhiro smiled.  
“You two know each other?!”, Kanon looked back and forth between the two.

 

_“Kanon will never find me!”, the young boy hoped, hiding behind a thick tree._  
_“Who are you hiding from?”, a voice popped up behind the boy._  
_“AH!”, he turned around and faced another boy with brown dreadlocks, decorated with not yet bloomed flowers. His face was partly covered in a green tint with white freckles._  
_“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare ya!”, the other kid apologized._  
_“Ah... I’m playing hide and seek with my little sister.”_  
_“Oh cool! I usually play that with the kids from my vi-“, the weird boy covered his mouth for a second, “I mean, uh-“_  
_“Are those real flowers?”_  
_“On my head? Yeah!”_  
_“Cool! How did you get them in there?”_  
_“I was born with them.”_  
_“Really?”_  
_“Yeah!”_  
_“That’s really cool!”, the two kids smiled at each other._  
_“Uhm... Yer a human, right?”, the boy with the green face asked out of nowhere._  
_“Yes! You... aren’t?”_  
_“Not really. I gotta go now, pretend ya never met me!”_  
_“Okay...? Bye then, flower kid!”_  
_“Bye bye!”_

 

“I am disappointed in my past self that he found you before she was able to.”, Kanon commented. Her and the magical creatures had sit down in the meantime.  
“I didn’t know you’ve met him too!”, Leon pointed out.  
“Yeah, he helped me when I hurt my knee. But that’s not what we have to talk about now. Leon, Kiyotaka, Mr. Ishimaru, they are Hiroko and Yasuhiro.... Uh....”, Kanon leaned a bit closer to Hiroko, “Do you guys have last names too?”, she whispered  
“Hagakure.”  
“Thanks.”, Kanon leant back to a normal position, “Hiroko and Yasuhiro Hagakure. They’re two of the villagers, who had to escape because someone was destroying their home.”  
“Miss Nakajima, two people with face paint and flowers in their hair doesn’t really help the situation.”, Takaaki explained.  
“What’s face paint?”, Hiroko asked, looking at Kanon, “There’s paint made for yer face?”  
“Mr. Ishimaru,”, Kanon ignored Hiroko question, “They’re real magical beings! And their home is in severe danger!”  
“Magical beings?! I really can’t waste my time with that!”, Takaaki stood up, ready to leave.  
“Wait! Yasu, can you like transform?”  
“We don’t do that if there’s no danger.”  
“Really? That’s a a bummer. I guess there’s nothing we can - BOO!”  
“AAAH!”, suddenly Yasuhiro poofed into his small mini-self and hid under the chair.  
He quickly realized that there was no real danger and that Kanon just messing with him. He flew up to her face and started scolding her, at least that’s what the squeaky noises he made could be interpreted as.  
“Sorry, I had to.”, Kanon offered the the tiny Hiro a hand. He sat on it, pouting.  
“So?”, the manager looked at the policeman with a smug smile on her face.  
“Well that’s... nothing a human could do...”, Takaaki slowly sat back down again.  
“Told you.”  
“But still, this isn’t really proof. They’re witnesses at most.”, Takaaki didn’t try to go against Kanon. He was just being realistic.  
“What do we have to do to bring you the proof?”  
“Hm...”, Takaaki thought about it for a second, “You could hire a detective to take pictures.”  
“We can’t involve more humans!”, Hiroko almost yelled at the policeman.  
“The thing is, Mrs Hagakure, if we have enough evidence to get those guys, we have to get more people involved to actually arrest all of them. I can’t do that all by myself. It’s not that simple.”  
“What do we need to do then?!”, Hiroko was slowly getting angry.  
“Well, from a policeman’s standpoint speaking, I need a valid testimony before we can investigate.”  
“Uhm, Mr. Ishimaru?”, Kanon interfered.  
“Yes?”  
“They don’t know what a testimony is. Or a policeman.”  
“Really?”  
Hiroko nodded.  
“This doesn’t make it easier...”, Takaaki scratched his head.  
“Aren’t there like anonymous hints you can give the police?”, Kanon asked.  
“Well, yes, but one person alone won’t do much.”  
“Hmm... I think i have an idea.”, the manager announced.


	5. Temporary Human

The “meeting” went on for about an hour until Kiyotaka and Takaaki had to leave. The former gave Kanon his phone number, just in case she needed to contact him or his father again.  
“Alright, time for me to go shopping.”, Kanon grabbed her purse, “Can you stay here for now?”, she then asked her brother.  
“As a babysitter? Or should I say... Uh...”, Leon wanted to make a pun with the word “babysitter” and whatever Yasuhiro and Hiroko exactly were. Thing is, he didn’t really know what exactly they were.  
“Does your kind have a name or somethin’?”, he asked Hiro, who had turned back to his human sized self in the meantime. He shrugged.  
“Sakura people I guess? I dunno.”, Yasuhiro told Leon.  
“Alright. Sakurasitting it is then.”  
“Thanks, Big Brother. I’ll be back soon!”, Kanon was about to leave when Hiro stopped her.  
“Actually...”, he hesitated to tell her why he stopped her from leaving.  
“What’s the matter, Yasu?”  
“Can I join ya? I kinda wanna see more of the human culture.”  
“Uhm...”, Kanon glanced over to Hiroko. She didn’t give any reaction.  
“Is there a chance you can become small for that?”, she then asked Hiro, “So you can hide you in my purse. There’s potential danger for you out there, you know?”  
“Oh! Right! Sure, I can do that!”, and with a poof, the usually rather tall young man was shrunk down to the size of a doll. Kanon opened her purse for the small creature to fly in. When she closed it, she left a small gap for Hiro to look out of the small hand bag.

“Alright, let’s do this!”, Kanon dropped two white plastic bags on the coffee table in her living room while she put two huge paper bags on the floor, leaning against the table.  
“What did you buy?”, Leon questioned his younger cousin, checking out the contents of one of the bags.  
“So, that’s just some candy stuff. I feel like this will be fun for Hiroko and Yasu to try.”, she explained while opening her purse to let out the latter mentioned Sakura person. He immediately transformed himself.  
“That was really excitin’!”, Hiro had a wide smile on his face, “Humans do so many strange things!”  
“Make up?”, Leon checked the other bag in the meantime and took out a bottle of foundation.  
“Yup. I also got some clothes, beanies and colored contacts.”, Kanon explained.  
“... I see where this is goin’.”  
“Where is this goin’?”, Hiroko asked, raising an eyebrow.  
“I will make you two look more human.”, the manager told the magical people.  
“...Only temporary of course.”, she then added.  
Leon stood up from the sofa to give Yasuhiro his seat.  
“Okay, but for what reason?”, Hiroko asked Kanon.  
“My plan is to walk to the police station later and give them an anonymous hint that someone has been destroying the forest. One person alone won’t be able to convince them to check up on that though. Three people however might be more convincing.”  
Kanon unpacked every single make up item she bought for this specific occasion.  
“Let’s start, shall we?”, she clapped and rubbed her hands together once she was done.  
“Yeah, no, I got a question before that.”  
“What is it, Hiroko?”  
“Will any of this hurt?”  
“Uh... The contacts maybe. And like can I hide your flowers under a beanie?”  
“What’s a beanie?”  
Kanon kneeled down to the paper bags and started to search in one of them.  
“Those are beanies.”, she then pulled out two wool caps, “They belong on your head.”  
She demonstrated on herself what it would look like to wear those things.  
“Looks cute.”, the Sakura mother commented.  
“Thanks! But will it hurt the flowers?”  
“No, I don’t think so.”  
“Good.”, Kanon took the beanie off. The then glanced at Yasuhiro and realized what situation he was. More specifically, his hair.  
“We’ll make _something_ out of this...”, she thought out loud.  
“So ya also said the contacts might hurt.”, Hiroko pointed randomly at the products Kanon put on the table, “What exactly are ya goin’ to do with them?”  
“Alright, so-“, Kanon grabbed a small box from the table, “-those things, well, those inside this packaging, will go in your eye.”  
“What?”  
“Humans don’t really have pink eyes, you know?”  
“But gold?”, Hiroko pointed at Kanon, who had golden eyes. That was counterproductive for Kanon's argument.  
“Yeah, my mom and I are rare cases. But like, humans usually have brown, blue or green eyes. Maybe gray. Red and purple on very, very rare occasions..”  
“But not pink.”  
“Nope. Especially not that vibrant. That’s why I got brown contacts. That’s like the most common eye color.”  
“And how are ya gonna put them in?”  
“You’ll see. Literally.”

Turning the two Sakura people into something more human looking wasn’t really that much of a challenge for Kanon.  
Not even the colored contacts were troublesome.  
“Let’s get you into these clothes. I hope the sizing is right.”, Kanon handed each humanized magic beings a few clothing items. Hiro and Hiroko didn’t have a hard time to figure out what item what was. Kanon tried to buy clothes that would be familiar the the two, like a long dress, jackets, baggy pants, even a haramaki for Yasuhiro. Except that the one Kanon bought was a dark brown and not a light pink.  
“... Danm, I forgot something.”, Kanon thought out loud.  
“What did you forget?”, Leon must have heard her.  
“ _A certain underwear for Hiroko._ ”, Kanon decided to be discreet about it.  
“You didn’t get her a bra?”  
“What’s that?”, Hiroko stopped inspecting her new dress.  
“A piece of clothing that- uh- keeps your breasts in place.”, Kanon tried to keep the explanation as simple again. Hiroko looked down on her self.  
“But they’re not goin’ anywhere. What keepin’ them in place for?”  
That question left Kanon baffled.  
“I mean, she’s got a point.”, Leon laughed.  
“I don’t even- Just put your clothes on. I’ll take care of your hair afterwards.”, Kanon went into the kitchen to give her housemates some privacy. Leon, still chuckling, followed her.  
“You think they can manage puttin’ on the stuff you got?”  
“I’m sure they get that done.”  
“Zippers and buttons?”  
“They’re easy to figure out.”  
“Really though?”, Leon pointed at the kitchen door. Kanon turned round to see why Leon did that. Yasuhiro stood in the doorframe, holding Hiroko’s dress. He smiled sheepishly.  
“... You don’t know how the zipper on the back of the dress works, right?”, Kanon asked.  
“Uh. I guess? Mom had troubles getting the dress past her hips.”  
“Okay, look.”, Kanon opened the zipper with one quick movement.  
“That’s how you open it. When you want to close it you just got the opposite direction.”  
“Ah! Thanks!”, Hiro turned around and walked back to the living room.  
Kanon didn’t realize at first that Yasuhiro didn’t manage to put on his new shirt yet. It wasn’t really his lean but defined build that locked her eyes on him. Just like in his face, Hiro had a pink tint and white freckles on his shoulders. It lead down his back, the closer it got to the hips, the more Sakura petals the pink tint formed.  
“Whoa...”, escaped Kanon’s mouth.  
“Privacy, lil sis.”, Leon grabbed his cousins shoulders and turned her away from the doorframe.  
“Y-Yeah, yeah, sorry.”

After about good twenty minutes the sibling-like-cousins left the kitchen to check up on the Sakura people. They’ve managed to put everything on by now.  
“Not too bad.”, Leon commented.  
“I know. I have a good taste.” Kanon joked.  
“I really like it too!”, Hiro smiled, “What do ya think, mom?”  
“It’s not too bad.”, Hiroko didn’t seem as impressed as her son. Not quite the reaction Hiro hoped to see.  
“Okay, now I gotta do your hair.”, Kanon grabbed the beanies, “I guess I’ll just hide most of your hair-“, she pointed at Hiroko, “-and, uh...”, she then looked at Yasuhiro. She still didn’t know what to do with those huge dreadlocks.  
“Maybe we can like... braid them down or something.”, she grabbed a single lock to inspect it.  
“Hm-!”, Kanon held back a noise.  
“So soft...”, she thought.  
“Should I sit down?”, Yasuhiro interrupted Kanon’s thoughts.  
“O-Oh! Yeah! You’re so tall, I might have trouble braiding everything.”  
“Lemme help.”, Leon offered.  
“Can you even still braid hair?”, the manager raised an eyebrow at her older cousin.  
“Come on, you made me do this so many times in the past. Plus we’ll be done way faster.”

“It’s weird walkin’ alongside humans just like that.”, Yasuhiro tried to stay as calm as possible.  
“Don’t get used to it.”, Hiroko told him. It felt like Hiroko forcefully tried to avoid showing any liking towards the human culture.  
“We’re almost there, don’t worry.”  
Kanon and her housemates were on the way to the police station. According to Kiyotaka, who Kanon texted shortly before she left her home, Takaaki was at work.  
“Here we are.”, after a few minutes of walking the three of them found themselves in front of a glass door entrance.  
“Stay focused.”, Kanon told the other two before entering the building.  
“Hello, how can we help you?”, a random police officer, who happened to walk by, noticed the three coming in.  
“Ah, good evening!”, Kanon greeted back, “We’d like to anonymously report something.”  
“Room 013 is free.”, the police officer pointed down the hallway.  
“Thank you!”, Kanon bowed a bit. Her and the undercover magic beings walked to where the officer pointed to.  
“011, 012, 013! Here it is.”, the manager knocked and waited for a permission to enter.  
“Come in!”, there it was.  
Kanon opened the door and entered the room with a “Thank you!” and a small but noticeable bow. Two policemen sat in the office, one of them having a phone call. Coincidentally, the other one was Takaaki, who apparently was bound to do some paperwork today. He faintly smiled as he saw the group of three approaching his desk.  
“How can I help you?”, he asked as if he didn’t know who stood in front of him.  
“We would like to anonymously report something.”, Kanon repeated what she had said earlier.  
“Sure, have a seat.”, there were only two chairs in front of Takaaki’s desk. Kanon insisted on letting her accompany have a seat each.  
“Okay so, what’s the situation?”, the police officer opened a writing program on his computer.  
Hiroko and Yasuhiro looked at Kanon with questioning looks. They clearly didn’t know what to do.  
“We saw people cutting trees in the forest. Wasn’t it under protection?”, Kanon pretended to not know.  
“It is, yes.”, Takaaki fake-reassured her. He wrote down a sentence and proceeded to ask more questions about the case.  
“Did you see who did it?”  
“A group of huma-“, Yasuhiro was interrupted by a very aggressive cough. Kanon wanted to signal that the Sakura male was about to blow his cover.  
“I mean-“, Hiro cleared his throat, “A group of men.”  
“Can you remember what they looked like? Like hair color, clothes, etc.”, usually, Takaaki didn’t have to explain what he meant. But after getting to know, that the two people sitting in front of him had no idea how human society works, he explained it briefly for them.  
“Well, there was one guy.”, Hiroko started describing, “He had long dark-blue, almost black hair. He was the one who told the others what to do basically.”  
“Is there more you can say about him beside the hair?”  
“Pale lavender eyes. Some random person called him Towa.”  
“Towa? Are you sure?”  
“Yup. He said somethin’ like “Is that really accordin’ to plan, Mr Towa?” or whatever.”  
“Ah. I see. Well, Mr Towa has many motives on why he would cut down the trees.”  
Suddenly a knock on the door interrupted the questioning.  
“Come in!”, Takaaki yelled.  
The door opened and a tall, muscular man came into the office. He had his hair tied back in a pony tail, a tool belt hung tight around his hips.  
“Ah, Mondo...”, Takaaki pointed out, “Did you cause any trouble or why are you here?”  
Mondo closed the door behind him.  
“Hey, hey, I thought ya gotta be professional here.”, Mondo grinned. He was in Takaaki’s office many times before. But usually because he was arrested for gang activities. After graduating high school, he retired from being a gang leader and instead started to work as a carpenter. Ironically, he also ended up dating and moving in together with Takaaki’s son Kiyotaka.  
The policeman sighed.  
“Yes, I know, I apologize. My colleague will be done in a few minutes, you can take a seat at his desk in the meantime.”  
“Actually, I don’t have a lot of time. My boss wants me to come back in about half an hour.”  
“I’m in the middle of hearing those three out. I can’t just take a break just to listen to someone who’s got a tight schedule.”  
“A’ight, a’ight.”, before the carpenter went to the desk on the opposite side of the office, he noticed a blonde figure standing near Takaaki’s desk.  
“Aren’t ya Leon’s sis?”  
“Yup. We’re here to report something we’ve seen in the forest.”  
“Forest? Like someone cuttin’ the woods?”  
“Ah, yeah?! How did you know?”  
“My boss sent me here because he got a offer that sounded pretty fishy to him. The wood came from the city’s forest apparently.”  
“Someone tried to offer your workplace wood from here?”, Takaaki asked to be sure.  
“Yeah. The person who tried to sell it to us said it was “local wood”. My boss never heard of that and that’s why he sent me here.”  
“Hm...”, Takaaki wrote Mondo’s testimony down as well.  
“Would you be willing to do an anonymous report as well?”, he then asked the former gang leader.  
“Sure.”, Mondo agreed.


	6. Not Really a Backtattoo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mondo calls Kiyotaka "Kiyo"  
> ... I thought I should point that out because of a certain Ultimate Anthropologist

Half an hour later, the four were able to leave the police station again.  
“So, who are yer friends?”, Mondo asked Leon’s cousin.  
“My new housemates. I got a bit lonely in my huge house.”, Kanon lied.  
“Cool. Oh, another thing.”  
“Yes?”  
“What did ya want from Kiyo earlier today?”  
“Ah-“, that caught Kanon off guard, “Y-you know, we thought, since we all saw the same thing in the forest yesterday, we could tell his father in private.”, she stammered.  
“Huh. Makes sense.”  
“What do think I wanted?”  
“I dunno. Maybe ya wanted to hit on him.”, Mondo joked.  
“... I see why you and Leon are friends.”  
“Heh, yeah. Well, gotta go back to work now.”, Mondo did a 45 degree turn and waved Kanon and her company good bye.  
“Ugh, let’s head home.”, Kanon signed about of exhaustion.  
“Can we walk a bit different this time?”, Yasuhiro asked.  
“Huh? Why that?”  
“I wanna see more of yer city!”, he smiled.  
Looking at her expression, Hiroko didn’t like her son’s idea. And Kanon noticed that too.  
“Maybe another time.”, she explained, “I’m really exhausted. Takaaki said the investigation will at least take a few days, so we got time for sightseeing tomorrow. And I’m sure you wanna change back into normal. Well, your normal that is.”  
“Ah, yeah, you’re right. I understand.”, naturally, Hiro was a bit crushed. But it was to be expected. At least he was understanding.  
“I mean, we also got all this candy i bought earlier. You have to try it.”  
“Oh yeah, right!”  
The trio went back home.

After changing back into their normal, mostly pink clothes, and removing the colored contacts and make up, the mother and son duo had, yet again, sat down on the sofa in the living room. They watched Kanon unpacking some plastic packs.  
“I made sure to get like, vegetarian candy.”, she explained.  
“What does that mean?”, Hiro asked.  
“Basically that you don’t eat meat.”  
“Meat?!”, the magic creatures exclaimed in shock.  
“Like other humans?!”, Hiroko asked.  
“Oh, no no no. That’s cannibalism, we don’t do that. That’s against the law I think. And against every morality ever. Humans eat like, fish, chicken, pork and beef. That’s the most common.”  
“Why would you eat animals?”  
“I dunno. That’s how humans developed over time. But there are humans that don’t eat meat.”  
“Vegetarians.”  
“Exactly! Other people go as far and don’t eat animal products at all. They’re called vegans.”  
“What do you mean with animal products now?”  
“Milk, eggs. Even honey.”  
“Oh, honey is delicious though.”  
At least they knew what honey was.  
“I didn’t get anything too fancy like cake or anything.”, Kanon explained, “Simple things for starters. What do you want to try first?”  
“What’s that?” Yasuhiro pointed at a thin, green box.  
“Green tea Pocky. It’s stick shaped candy basically.”  
“Oh so ya make candy out of tea?”  
“Not only, but yeah. Here.”, Kanon opened the packaging for Hiro and handed it to him.  
“What about you, Hiroko?”  
“I don’t want anythin’. Thank you.”  
Again, Hiroko was holding herself back.  
“Why not, mom?”, her son asked, having at least five pieces of Pocky hanging out of his mouth. He must like them.  
“...”, Hiroko hesitated to give an answer.  
“Mom?”  
Hiroko sighed.  
“I don’t wanna get too used to human culture.”, she then admitted.  
“Oh.”  
“I’m scared. Ya seem to like it here a lot already. But... I don’t. I wanna go back to our village.”  
Yasuhiro swallowed the bits of candy.  
“I... wanna go back too.”, Hiro admitted as well, “But we can’t right now. So why not enjoy human things while we wait to be able to go back?”, he then held out a single piece of the stick candy to his mother. She carefully grabbed it and inspected it. She wasn’t too sure if she wanted to eat it or not.  
“... I don’t really have a choice, huh?”, the mother smiled weakly before biting into the candy. It was unclear if it was a real smile though.

“I wanna go back too.”, Yasuhiro’s voice echoed through Kanon’s head. That small sentence made her restless. The second night that Kanon wasn’t able to sleep because of Yasuhiro.  
It was weird to her. Hiroko said a similar sentence only a few moments before her son did, and yet Yasuhiro’s voice was the one that didn’t want to leave Kanon’s head.  
“Ugh, for crying out loud...”, the manager stood up and decided to get a glass of water. For herself this time.  
Lucky for her, no one was awake.  
Even though she wished someone was.  
She didn’t want to be alone.  
Kanon slowly made her way to the kitchen in the dark.  
It was absolutely quiet.  
Kanon entered the kitchen. She was glad that there was a streetlight right in front of her kitchen window. So she didn’t have to turn on the blinding light.  
She walked up to a cupboard, grabbed a glass, and filled it with some tab water.  
The manager took a quick sip and sighed.  
“God damn it, what the hell is up with me?”, she whispered to herself.  
Kanon embraced the silence and the darkness for a second. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  
She didn’t know what was going on with her.  
Not only didn’t the “I wanna go back to.” leave her head. Yasuhiro’s soft hair was in her mind too. And his back with the petals flowing down to his hips. His innocence and excitement about human culture.  
Kanon shook her head.  
It was almost like as if she had a crush on him.  
...  
“Oh my god...”, she unintentionally let out.  
“It’s been only two days?!”, Kanon mentally screamed.  
“No. It’s just- It’s just the weird situation we’re all in.”, she tried to wave it off.  
In one gulp, the young adult woman emptied the glass, put it in the sink and went back to her bedroom.  
Before she was able to put her hand on the handle, a voice stopped her from doing that.  
She heard another door open and close.  
“I guess I’m not alone...”, Kanon opened her bedroom door, “Well can’t be hel-“  
“Oh, hey Flowersound.”  
“-ped.”, Kanon closed the door again and turned around.  
“Hey Yasu.”, she greeted back, “Taking a walk through my house again?”  
“Yeah, kinda.”, Yasuhiro rubbed the back of his neck, “What’s up with ya?”  
“I was thirsty.”  
“Ah, I see.”  
“Well, have fun on your walk.”, Kanon joked before turning around again.  
“Wait!”, Hiro stopped her.  
“What is it?”  
“I kinda wanna know what your city is like at night.”  
“Ah.”, Kanon didn’t understand why Yasuhiro was so invested in knowing so much about humans and how they lived. He wasn’t going to stay for long anyway.  
“We’re not gonna take a walk outside now. I don’t wanna smear make up all over your face at two in the morning.”  
“I know, I know. But maybe ya can tell me about it.”  
“Hm... You know what?”, Kanon walked past Hiro and gestured he should follow her.  
“Where are we goin’?”  
“The sofa.”  
“Oh okay.”  
The two of them slowly wandered to the living room. Neither of them even thought of turning on the light. Well, mainly because Kanon didn’t want to get blinded and Hiro was scared of this human witchcraft called electricity. It wasn’t completely dark though. Just like in the kitchen, some street lights put some visibility in the rooms.  
“Have a seat.” Kanon let herself fall on the sofa. Yasuhiro slowly sat down next to her.  
“Why don’t you tell me a bit about your culture?”, Kanon then asked.  
“Uh, sure. But it’s not as interestin’ as yours, really.”  
“Probably because you’re used to it. Just tell me a bit.”  
“What exactly?”  
“Hm.”, the manager thought for a second.  
“What does your tattoo on your back mean?”, she then came up with a question.  
“Oh, it’s no a tattoo.”  
“Don’t tell me you were born with that too.”  
“Kind of. The colors on yer back don’t really show up when yer little. They start to come when yer in yer bloomin’ phase.”  
“What exactly is the blooming phase?”  
“When we met my flowers weren’t bloomin’ yet, right?”  
“Right.”  
“Bloomin’ phase is basically the phase between that stage and the stage I am now.”  
“Which is?”  
“Full bloom.”  
“Huh. We call that adulthood. But moving on. What does your back thing mean then?”  
“It’s basically my last name.”  
“Huh?”  
“My back is basically concealed among the leaves.”  
“Hagakure.”  
“Yeah.”  
Suddenly Kanon had a realization.  
“Is that why you call me Flowersound?”  
“That’s yer name, isn’t it?”  
“I mean, yeah. But isn’t that a bit of a mouthful?”  
“I’m fine with that.”  
“O-Okay...”, Kanon thought it was kinda cute that Hiro would go out if his way to give her such a long nickname.  
“Do the other villagers have the same back stuff?”  
“Yeah. Well, with different pattens of courses. My back mark is something me, mom and grandpa share. But there are others. Like our village leaders have a single figure on their back. It’s kinda hard to explain to be honest. But in the end it means Ogami.”  
“Large deity...?”  
“Exactly.”  
“That’s really cool!”  
“How did ya get yer last name?”  
“Uh- I don’t know. I’m sure my name has some sort of history but I never bothered to look it up.”  
The two continued having various conversations until the first one fell asleep.

Soft raindrops clashed agains the windows. Dripping noises disturbed the silence.  
The young woman slowly opened her eyes and stretched her arms above her head. She let out a big yawn.  
“Hm...”, she looked around, realizing that she wasn’t in her bedroom.  
“Must have fallen asleep on the sofa.”, she concluded.  
She rubbed her eyes and sat up. That movement however caused a squeak.  
“Hm?”  
The woman looked down on herself and saw a small pink figure laying on her blanket covered lap.  
“Sorry Yasu.”, she apologized to the small creature.  
The tiny Sakura being rubbed his face before looking up to the human.  
“You good?”, Kanon lightly poked Hiro’s cheek. He nodded against her finger.  
“Good. Let’s make some breakfast.”, the manager lifted the blanket, forcing Yasuhiro to start floating. She stood up, and then realized that the blanket wasn’t there before. If was one of the guest room’s bed blankets.  
“Did you get me the blanket?”, she looked at Yasuhiro. He nodded with some ringing bell noises.  
“Thanks.”, Kanon smiled, still being a bit tired.  
She walked into the kitchen, being followed not-so-quietly by Mini Hiro.  
Kanon checked out her fridge to see what she can do for breakfast. And while she was at it she would prepare something for her housemates too. Whenever Hiroko decided to show up. Kanon was sure the mother of one will be pleasantly surprised to see ready-to-eat breakfast.  
The young woman silently prepared everything while the little floating man was watching her.

Kanon set the usual spot on the coffee table with her breakfast. She carried Yaushiro’s plate as well since he didn’t bother changing back yet.  
“Care to become 180cm again?”, Kanon looked at the floating Hiro while taking a seat on the sofa.  
The wind with the petals appeared again for a few seconds.  
“How do ya know my height?”, Hiro asked once he was able to use his voice again.  
“Just a good guess. You’re, like, a few centimeters taller than Leon.”  
“Huh. I didn’t really notice.”, the Sakura creature took a seat next to the human manager.  
“Why were you small in the first place? Did you hear a noise and got scared?”  
“Eheh-“, Hiro scratched the back of his head.  
“Another good guess?”, Kanon lightly elbowed her housemate in the side.  
“We’re just really cautious!”, Hiro defended himself.  
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just joking.”  
Kanon grabbed the remote control and turned on the TV.  
“Hey, is there a chance mom and I can go out without people seein’ us?”, Yasuhiro asked while Kanon was switching through the channels.  
“Uh, why?”  
“Rain is good for us.”  
“Oh, okay. Yeah, I have a balcony, we can go there late-“, Kanon suddenly stopped switching at a news channel. A person with similar inhuman traits as Yasuhiro and Hiroko was displayed on the TV.  
“Oh no.”, the two sitting on the sofa said simultaneously.  
“This-“, a third voice appeared.  
Hiro and Kanon turned their heads to the living rooms door.  
A shocked Hiroko stood in the doorframe.  
“Why-“, she slowly started to become aggressive, “WHY IS ONE OF OUR KIND IN THIS STUPID TV THING?!”  
She ran up to the TV, trying to break it, but Kanon and Hiro were able to jump off of the sofa in time to hold her back. Hiroko pushed them both off in one swift motion.  
“Mom-“  
“What is the meanin’ of this?!”, the mother yelled, ignoring her son’s attempts of trying to calm her down.  
“I don’t-“  
“This is why we can’t trust humans! That’s why we’re bein’ told to stay away from them!”  
“Mom, please-“  
“WE HAVE LOST OUR HOME!”, a strong and sudden gust of wind hit both Kanon and Hiro. The fragile human would have crashed against the wall, maybe even into the sofa and table behind her if Yasuhiro hadn’t caught her in time. He seemed to be able to withstand the explosion like wind.  
Apparently, it wasn’t strong enough to break glass, like windows or the TV Hiroko aimed for first, but it was enough to knock over the breakfast that was resting on the table, and to knock down some framed pictures Kanon had hanging on her wall. The angry mother must have aimed at her.  
Hiroko panted heavily out of rage. She stared at Kanon, who was still locked in Yasuhiro’s arms.  
“Let go of her!”, Hiroko demanded. But her son didn’t react.  
A teardrop fell onto Kanon’s shoulder.  
“Huh...?”, Hiroko looked up from the human to face Yasuhiro. The tear came from him.  
“Flowersound tried her best to help us.”, the male Sakura person tried his best to speak clearly while tears were running down his face, “Not all humans are bad!”  
“I-“  
“She went all the way out to disguise us as humans so we can save our home! It’s not her fault that someone from our village got found by another human!”  
Kanon wondered why Yasuhiro was so defensive of her.  
“I’m... really sorry...”, Hiroko apologized, showing remorse, “I shouldn’t have freaked out.”  
She suddenly fell to her knees and bowed in front of Kanon.  
“Please forgive me!”, she begged.  
Kanon however was speechless.  
“Ah-“, she still needed to process what just happened. She shook her head to come back to reality.  
“I- Yeah, I forgive you, please stand up again.”, Kanon started to feel uncomfortable with Hiroko almost laying on the floor begging for mercy.  
“I need a second.”, Kanon then escaped Hiro’s arms and left the living room.  
While she was leaving she decided to go to her bedroom to change into different clothes and maybe check her phone she left there last night.  
Once she arrived in her bedroom, she went straight to her desk to see if someone had left her messages on her phone.  
“12 texts and 4 missed calls.”, Kanon read, holding her phone in her right hand.  
“Let’s see.”  
All of the messages and some calls were Leon trying to reach out to his younger sister-like-cousin. He was spamming her in hopes for her to respond.  
One call came from Kiyotaka.  
Before calling Leon back, Kanon decided to have a quick talk with Kiyotaka. She dialed his number.  
It took a few moments for the other one to pick up his phone.  
“I apologize for letting you wait.”, Taka immediately told Kanon, “I was in the library studying.”  
“Oh right, you’re probably at school now, right?”  
“Yes. But my teacher for this class is sick, so we are free to do what we want.”  
“Okay, good. Why did you call earlier?”  
“My father told me there were multiple reports of people seeing other people with “weird face paint” and “pink robes”. It does match the description of both Hagakure’s.”  
“Yeah, yeah. You can’t know but one of the villagers is on the news right now.”  
“Really?”  
“Mhm.”  
“That doesn’t sound good. But I can assure you it has nothing to do with my father or the investigation.”  
“I thought so. Maybe some of the villagers weren’t as careful in hiding as others. To be honest, I found Hiroko and Yasu on the open street while they were in their tiny form.”  
“How did no one else notice them?”  
“They looked like dolls. Maybe people thought some kid dropped them. But why would anyone report someone with “weird face paint”? Did they do something bad?”  
“Apparently they showed weird behavior as well.”  
“Oh. Makes sense. They have no clue how any of this human stuff works.”  
“What are you planning to do now?”  
“I don’t know yet. First I have to call Leon back. He’s been trying to reach me for a while now.”  
“Okay. Classes are about to start again soon anyways. Have a good day.”  
“Hopefully. Have a good day too.”  
Kanon then hung up and immediately dialed Leon’s number.  
“Finally! Have you seen the news?!”, not even a hello escaped the former baseball player’s mouth.  
“Yes. And it’s bad. Really bad. Hiroko totally freaked out.”, Kanon explained.  
“Damn. Should I come over?”  
“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. There was a small... situation going on and I don’t know in what mood Yasu and Hiroko are right now. More humans might anger her again.”  
“Huh, shit. Please be careful.”  
“I’ll try to be.”  
“What’s the plan for now?”  
“I don’t know. And I’m disappointed in myself for not having a backup plan. What kind of manager am I?”  
“A sporty one? You were Sports Manager after all.”  
“Yeah, right.”  
“But you’re doin’ a good job as a landlord too!”  
“You’re only saying that because I let you live in one of my apartments.”  
“Heh, maybe.”  
“Well, I gotta hang up now. Have to change and then see what my housemates are doing.”  
“Alright. If you want me to come over just text me.”  
“Thanks. See ya.”  
“Bye bye.”  
Kanon hung up once more. She sighed.


	7. After the Peaceful Rain

After getting dressed, Kanon went back into the living room, expecting the worst. Just in case.  
When she entered the living room, the manager was pleasantly surprised. The two magic beings had cleaned up the mess Hiroko caused. But instead of throwing away the food, Hiro still ate it. At least the food they were able to save. It was just chopped up fruits only anyway.  
Hiroko however, who was kneeling right across the table in front of her son, didn’t eat.  
“You know your breakfast is in the kitchen, right?”, Kanon drew the attention of her housemates to her with that statement.  
“No. I’ve made a mistake.”, Hiroko said, “I won’t eat for the day as a punishment.”  
Kanon sighed. She walked into the kitchen and came back with the food she had prepared for Hiroko. It wasn’t that much different from what Hiro had.  
“Eat. Or I’ll be the one who gets pissed.”, the manager put the plate on the table, in front of the mother. She then sat down on the surprisingly clean sofa, next to Yasuhiro.  
“... Th-Thank ya.”  
“You’re welcome.”  
They even managed to recover most of the food Kanon had made for herself.  
“Do ya... want us to leave?”, Hiro quietly asked.  
“No. I completely understand why Hiroko reacted like that.”  
“What are we goin’ to do now?”  
“You’re the third to ask. I don’t know. I need some time to think.”

Kanon walked back and forth in her office room. That was the room that had the balcony. While the Sakura people were outside and did what seemed to be meditating, the manager tried to think of a new plan. She kept her phone close, her hand was basically glued to it, just in case some new information would come up.  
Luckily it was only the same news reported and reposted over and over again. For now.  
“At least you two seem to get some temporarily peace.”, she looked out of the glass door that lead to the balcony  
“Maybe I should get towels.”  
Kanon left the office for a few minutes to grab some towels for the two meditating outside.  
When she came back the mother and son were still in the same position as before.  
Outside, legs crossed, dripping wet from the rain.  
“Hm. At least they left their robes here...”, before Hiroko and Yasuhiro went outside they took of their robes and Haramaki, which was something only Hiro wore, and put it on Kanon’s desk.  
The young adult really wanted to try on one of the robes. But two things were holding her back.  
One, she didn’t know if that was disrespectful or whatever.  
Two, she still had to think of a plan.  
So after placing the two towels on her office chair, she went back to thinking more. Walking back and forth in her office that is.  
Kanon looked at her phone. More news made their way to the public.  
“More pink robe wearing people were spotted throughout the city and the city’s forest.”, Kanon read quietly to herself.  
“I’m waiting for some unserious site to call them a cult or something...”  
Kanon was lost. Keeping it a secret didn’t matter anymore. Sakura people probably have to adapt to human society now. Or they rebuild their village, but have to deal with possible annoying tourists. The young woman never even thought she would get involved in such a situation. To her it felt like everything rested on her shoulders. She was just a simple manager. Not a lawyer. Why did she have to deal with it?  
Kanon was about to give up.  
She didn’t know what else she was able to do.  
“... Why am I even putting so much effort into this? It’s not like someone’s forcing me to help them. I could stop anytime.”, she thought.  
But immediately regretted that thought.  
She was disappointed in herself for thinking like that.  
“No, I have to finish what I started!”  
Suddenly the glass door behind her opened. Apparently the Hagakure family was done with meditation. Kanon immediately handed them the towels.  
“That was really refreshin’.”, Hiroko smiles while drying her arms.  
“Mhm.”, was all Hiro could give for an answer since he had his towel all over his face.  
“I’ll let you two change into dry clothes.”, Kanon walked towards the door.  
“Wait!”, Yasuhiro quickly removes the now damp towel from his face.  
“What is it?”  
“Could ya bring me the pants ya got me?”, he smiled sheepishly.  
“Ah- Sure-!”

“So ya really can’t help us anymore?”, Yasuhiro asked. The three of them have gathered back in the usual spot. The living room’s sofa.  
“Not really.”, Kanon was too scared to look either in the eyes, “I mean, I could help you if I knew how. As for now I got nothing.”  
“Are there any new news?”  
“Only that more of you seem to appear in the city.”  
“So... we can never return home?”  
“I don’t know...”  
Suddenly a ringing tone echoed through the living room. Someone tried to call Kanon.  
“Unknown number...?”, she read what was shown on the display before picking up.  
“Hello?”  
“Hello Miss Nakajima, it’s Ishimaru from the police department.”  
“Ah-“, Kanon clearly didn’t expect him to call, “H-How can I help you?”  
“Are you able to come to the police office today?”  
“Yeah...?”  
“Please bring your housemates as well.”  
“I will. When exactly though?”  
“As fast as possible.”  
“We’ll be there right away.”  
“Perfect, thank you. Good bye.”  
“Bye.”, she hung up and sighed.  
“What’s the matter?”, Hiroko asked.  
“We gotta go to the police again. Come on you two.”, Kanon stood up.  
“Wait, without disguise?”  
“People know of your existence by now. Come on now, we have to hurry.”

The moment Kanon and her company entered the building, they ran into Takaaki, one of his colleagues and the mayor of the city.  
“Good evening, Mayor.”, Kanon bowed slightly, “I’m Nakajima Kanon.”  
“Ah, perfect!”, the mayor exclaimed.  
“How can I help you?”, Kanon then asked.  
“I’ve heard you know a lot about those... people.”, the mayor didn’t know how to describe them properly.  
“Sakura people.”, Kanon told him.  
“Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense, considering how pink they all are.”  
“That’s actually what he told us to call them so.”, Kanon pointed at Yasuhiro.  
“Ah, I see. Well, Miss Nakajima, would you be willing to bring me and Officer Ishimaru to their village?”  
“I- I don’t know where that is...!”, Kanon didn’t even have time to think about how the mayor knew there was a village and that the Sakura people came from there.  
“We do.”, Hiroko interfered.  
She was the last person to be expected to make such a statement in front of another human. That must have meant she will do anything to save her village.  
“Please, bring us there. I would like to see it for myself.”, the mayor asked Hiroko. She nodded in agreement. Good thing the rain has stopped.  
Takaaki called over a second police officer to accompany the group.

The walk through the forest already took about 30 minutes, but they still haven’t reached the not-so-secret-anymore village yet. And from the police station to the forest itself it already took 20 minutes.  
“I hope we’ll arrive soon...”, Kanon sighed, “I don’t wanna walk through the forest all day.”  
“Should I give ya another piggy back ride?”, Yasuhiro joked. Kanon giggled.  
“We’re almost there anyway.”, he then told her.  
Suddenly Hiroko started running away from the others.  
“Ah!”, Hiro ran right after.  
“I assume they found the village?”, Takaaki made a good guess.  
“Probably.”, Kanon shrugged, “I’d say let’s run after them.”  
The village looked like hell. Luckily, no construction machinery was left behind. However, a big hole, assuming there was a building before, was gaping at one side of the village. The other side had a mountain of dirt and wooden planks, blocking off a river from the Sakura home.  
A lot of trees had been cut down as well, stumps were part of the huge pile of dirt.  
A lot of smaller houses were still existent though.  
Yasuhiro and Hiroko were nowhere to be seen. They probably went into one of the houses, most likely their own.  
Takaaki and his colleague started taking pictures of the scenery. Not because it was beautiful, it probably was but not anymore, but because it was part of their investigation.  
“Maybe we should take a look as well, Ms Nakajima.”, the mayor suggested.  
“Of course.”  
They walked towards the still standing houses, to leave the police men alone.  
“It does look like this village has been existing for quite some time.”, the mayor commented, inspecting the first house.  
“Yeah. And it’s sad to see what happened to it.”, Kanon added. She continued walking, leaving the mayor behind. She looked at the individual houses until she found one with an open door. The manager decided to see if someone was inside. Might have been a stupid idea but Kanon didn’t bother. She walked up the small stairs and carefully looked inside.  
Luckily for her, Hiroko was the one being in the house. She stood with the back to the entrance, inspecting what seemed to be like drawers.  
“Hey Hiroko...”, Kanon drew the mother’s attention to her as she entered the home.  
“Ah, hey Kanon.”, the Sakura creature looked over her shoulder.  
“Is this your house?”  
“Yeah. Everthin’ seems to be fine so far.”, Hiroko told the human with a weak smile.  
“Where’s Yasu?”, Kanon asked.  
“He’s probably with the birds.”  
“Birds?”  
Hiroko pointed at a wooden door to her left.  
Kanon walked towards it and slowly opened it. More small stairs, but this time leading down into a garden. Speaking of which, Hiro was sitting in the middle of the garden, being surrounded by chicken-like birds. They looked like chicken, but with more magical aspects to them.  
“Hey...”, Kanon slowly walked down the few steps. She didn’t want to scare the birds.  
“Ah, hey Flowersound!”, Hiro turned his upper body a bit, enough to face Kanon, “Come here, come here!”  
The manager carefully made her way to the magic being. She didn’t want to upset any animal present in the garden. She squatted down to be face to face with Yasuhiro. He, sitting with his legs crossed, had three small chicks sitting in his lap. They weren’t yellow, like the baby chickens Kanon knew. They were white with a green face. And they also looked puffier than actual chickens.  
“So cute!”, she exclaimed.  
“I know right? They hatched a few weeks ago. I’m glad to see they’re fine.”  
“You were only gone for two days or so.”  
“Well, yeah, but I was scared that the humans that destroyed the temple might have done more and killed our pets.”  
“Oh. So the big hole used to be a temple?”  
“Mhm. The pile of dirt cut off the water system we had. It’s gonna be a lot to fix.”  
A fully grown “chicken” came running to Yasuhiro.  
“That’s the mom.”, he took the three chicks with both his hands and put them on the from the rain soaked ground, “I guess it’s time for dinner.”  
The mother chicken started to feed her babies.  
“Let’s leave them alone for a bit.”, Hiro then stood up and dusted some dirt off of himself, “Let’s head inside.”  
Kanon quietly followed Hiro inside.  
“Is everythin’ okay, mom?”, Yasuhiro asked once he entered. He waited for Kanon to come in to close the door.  
“From what I can tell, yeah.”, the mother was inspecting a pink robe. It looked just like the one she was wearing, except not as long.  
“Maybe we should take some spare clothes with us this time.”, she suggested.  
“Wait, you’re coming with me again?”, Kanon asked to be safe. Hiroko was the one who didn’t want to conform to the human society. Her saying such a thing was really unexpected.  
“I’m scared that, if we stay here, the humans who already destroyed the temple are goin’ to kill us.”  
“Yeah, reasonable.”  
“Ms Nakajima?”, a voice called from outside the home.  
“Coming!”, she quickly walked up to the front door frame. She saw the mayor outside looking for her.  
“I’m over here!“  
“Ah, Ms Nakajima-“, the mayor spotted her and walked up to her.  
“What’s the matter?”, the manager asked.  
“I’ve walked around a bit, taking a good look at everything.”, the mayor started explaining, “It’s truly sad to see what happened.”  
“Yeah...”  
“I want to restore it.”  
“Really?!”, Kanon’s eyes widened in both shock and surprise.  
“Yes, yes. It will take a while. Especially since I have to get some paperwork through. But still, this village is part of the forest.”  
“I’m- I’m surprised, really. Positively of course!”  
“I’m very drawn to nature. Especially this forest. It is one of our city’s treasure. But first we have to find the culprits who did all of this. Officer Ishimaru and his colleague are still investigating.”  
“I have a good guess who it was.”  
“Me too, Ms Nakajima. Me too. But we need evidence.”  
“Of course.”

One problem seemed to be solved. At least the restoration wasn’t something Kanon had to take care of.  
She was asked however to be some sort of communicator to and representative for the Sakura people. She probably was the only one who had so much to do with the Sakura people, at least more than any other citizen.  
Speaking of the manager, her and her two housemates were back in the human home. Kanon immediately turned on the TV for some news updates.  
“Unofficial sources claim that the people in pink traditional clothing were looking for shelter mostly.”, was the only new thing the news reports had added.  
“Gosh, they have to stop reporting on them...”, Kanon took her phone and went to her contacts. She then scrolled until she found the one labeled “Dad♡”.  
“Hopefully he picks up.”, she then dialed the number.  
She waited a few moments. After five or six times, the ringing tone stopped and a male voice came through the phone.  
“Kanon, sunshine, it’s nice to hear from you again!”  
“Hey dad~”, Kanon put on her sweetest voice.  
“How is my favorite girl?”  
“I’m fine. Kinda stressed.”  
“Huh, why that? Is Leon causing trouble?”, her father joked.  
“Eh, just the usual stuff.”, she joked back.  
“Hehe. I’m not surprised. But for real now, what’s the matter?”  
“You know those “pink robe wearing people” that have appeared over the past few days?”  
Kanon was hoping, since her father was one of the higher ups in the television business, that he might be able to change something about the news programs. Like, refraining from talking about the Sakura people altogether.  
“Yeah, what about them?”  
“Is there are chance, at least the channels you are responsible for, that they could stop doing reports about them?”  
“Huh? For what reason?”  
“Well, uh, they don’t really like being exposed like that. To humans at least.”  
“Kanon, what do you know about them?”  
“A lot. But I can’t tell you. Just trust me on that, please?”  
“Sweetie, I can’t just change the program however you please.”  
“Pleeeeeaseeeee, daddy?”, the “daddy-card”, as Kanon liked to call it, usually worked. It was something she used to call her father constantly when she was younger. But she stopped using that. Too many people were associating the word “daddy” with something dirty and Kanon was tired of saying “I have a rich daddy. Oh, and I don’t mean “daddy” in the pervy, role-playing way. My biological daddy.”  
Kanon’s father sighed.  
“Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”  
“Thanks daddy!”, Kanon jumped a bit on the spot.  
“Anything for you, sunshine. I have go back to work now.”  
“Alright, love you!”  
“Love you too.”  
Kanon then hung up.  
“Now that that’s out of the way-“  
“Who did ya talk to?”  
Apparently, someone eavesdropped on Kanon again. This time it was only one of them.  
“What did I say about eavesdropping a phone call?”, she turned around, glaring at the eavesdropper.  
“Sorry...!”, he sheepishly smiled, “But it still fascinated me that ya can talk to a human without the human being next to ya.”  
“I was just kidding.”, Kanon smiled, “I get why you’re so curious. But still, privacy is something you guys have too, right?”  
Yasuhiro nodded.  
“Thought so. Well, I was talking to my dad.”, Kanon then explained.  
“Ah.”, was all Hiro responded with.  
“It’s part of my somewhat-kinda-not-yet-existing new plan.”  
“... Ya gotta work on that name.”  
“I know, I know. My dad is responsible for a lot of TV stuff and I asked him if he could do something about the news reports on you guys. So that’s done.”  
“What’s next?”  
“I~... don’t know. I guess the only thing we need to do is like get the village back together or something.”  
“We should look for Oogami.”  
“The village leader...?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Not a bad idea actually....”, Kanon thought about it for a moment, putting a finger on her chin.  
“But how are we gonna find them?”, she then asked.  
“Oogami is huge and intimidatin’.”  
Kanon tilted her head in surprise and confusion.  
“They’re what now?”  
She always had that peaceful image burned in her mind, since (ignoring that one outburst Hiroko had) the two Sakura people living with her were always kind and respectful. Plus living in a forest, not knowing what corrupting powers were, also supported the “peaceful villager” image.  
“But Oogami’s nice.”, Yasuhiro smiled. But then quickly dropped it.  
“I think.”  
“You think?”  
“I’ve never really gotten closer than two meters because Oogami scares me. A lot.”  
“... They’re really that intimidating?”  
“Yup. And, well, I get scared easily.”  
“Huh, I would have never guessed.”, Kanon noted sarcastically.  
A small grumbling came up.  
“Guess it’s time for some dinner...”, Kanon held her empty stomach.  
“Then let’s eat.”  
“I gotta go shopping first.”


	8. The Encounter of the Large Deity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not updating last Sunday. I wasn't at home for the past week. But hey, guess what, y'all get two chapters today!

The plastic bag Kanon held with her right hand was dangling, making plastic rustling noises. She went out grocery shopping, not alone. Of course she had the not-so-familiar-with-human-anything beings with her. She didn’t want to leave them alone.  
The manager decided to take a different route than usual. Because one, she wanted to show Yasuhiro around like she promised, two, they might encounter more Sakura people, hoping for Oogami.  
Back when she was at Hope’s Peak Academy, being the Ultimate Sports Manager, Kanon sometimes worked together with one of the upperclassmen. His name was Nekomaru Nidai, Ultimate Coach. He was a **beast**. He stood 198cm, his muscles were able to crush wood easily. Intimidating. Very intimidating. But he was a nice and supportive person. Loud, but nice.  
And that’s what Kanon thought Oogami might look like. Only with a pink robe.  
Her and her company saw some Sakura people, but they were more hidden than public, so they decided not to talk to them. Less attention was better for them.  
The walk would have been way easier if people hadn’t stopped to talk to Hiroko and Yasuhiro. They were curious to know who those pink clothes wearing people really were. But Kanon always interfered, saying that there was no time for questions. Plus the hunger was nagging on her as well. She wanted to get some food in her as fast as possible.  
“We should have disguised ourselves.”, Hiroko sighed, “This is gettin’ tirin’.”  
“Yeah.”, Kanon agreed, just as exhausted, “But we’re almost home.”  
The more the three walked, the more crowded and louder it got. At one point, long honking and angry yelling appeared out of nowhere.  
“Get out of the way!”, Kanon was able to decipher through the loud crowd.  
“What is going on...?”, Kanon squeezed her way through the crowd. She finally reached the the street, seeing cars lined up, driving at a very slow pace. Her normally walking would have been faster.  
“Hold on!”, suddenly someone grabbed her from behind, carrying her in a bridal style form, and... flew off with her? It wasn’t really flying, it was more of a very high and powerful jumping.  
“AAAH YASU, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”, Kanon screamed.  
“Gettin’ out of this crowd.”, Yasuhiro landed, and then jumped again.  
“I didn’t know you could do that?!”  
“So humans can’t do high jumps?”  
“No?! Not like that!”  
The two of them jumped in between the snail like moving vehicles. When Kanon looked past Hiro’s hair, she noticed that Hiroko was following them, with about three cars worth of space, with the same jumping-slash-flying technique. Her long hair and ground touching gown made everything look more elegant when she jumped. Yasuhiro probably just looked like a hero saving a damsel in distress. The way he held Kanon supported that theory.  
Hiro did one last jump until landing in front of the queue of cars and the reason why they were so slow.  
“A-Ah...”, the magical being let out. Kanon looked up and faced another Sakura person. But this one was huge, had a scar in their face, was of strong build and really tall. Some might say, they were intimidating.  
“Hagakure.”, they said, voice raspy, deep and monotone.  
“O-Oogami...”  
Just like Kanon imagined.  
Hiro carefully let her back down to the ground. She was finally able to analyze the leader a bit better. Upon further inspection she noticed that Oogami was wearing a dress. Similar the one Hiroko had worn.  
“Oogami’s a woman...?”, Kanon thought out loud.  
“Yes. Human. I am a female.”, Oogami answered the question.  
“S-Sorry.”, Kanon understood why Yasuhiro was so scared of her.  
In the meantime Hiroko has joined the three in front of the honking cars and angry people.  
“Ya really shouldn’t be walkin’ on the street, Sakura.”, Hiroko told the leader as if they were close friends, “Humans get mad.”  
“How do you know?”, the huge Sakura person asked.  
“The honkin’.“  
“This human taught you?”, Sakura asked. The groups had left the street and now stood on the sidewalk, leaving space for others to pass by.

_A loud honk echoed through the street, quickly followed by angry yelling from inside the car._  
_“What was that?!”, Hiroko exclaimed in shock._  
_“Shh! Don’t blow your cover.”, Kanon shushed her._  
_“That was a honk. Coming from those fast things that make “nyoom” when they pass by.”, she obviously quoted one of the two disguised Sakura people._  
_“What is a honk good for?”, Hiroko asked._  
_“In this case, the driver in front of them didn’t drive properly and they angrily honked at them for that.”_  
_“Oh, so to let them know they’re angry.”_  
_“Exactly.”_

“Yeah.”, Hiroko answered.  
“Human.”  
“Yes?”, Kanon tried her best to play it completely cool. Even though she was totally freaking out in the inside.  
“What’s your name?”  
“Kanon.”  
“Kanon, and?”  
“Kanon Nakajima. He likes to call me Flowersound.”, she pointed at Yasuhiro.  
“Is that what your name means?”  
Kanon nodded.  
“What do flowers sound like? They are usually silent.”  
“I guess they sound like me...?”, Kanon never questioned the meaning of her name until now.  
“Hm.”, Sakura didn’t seem to be a huge fan of jokes. Or humans. Or humans making jokes.  
“... Hagakure.”, Sakura put her attention to Yasuhiro.  
“Ah-!”, Hiro reflexively hid behind his mother, “I mean- Yeah?”  
“How did you encounter Kanon?”  
“She actually found us unconscious.”  
“So she has protected you from any danger?”  
Yasuhiro nodded.  
“I see.”, suddenly Sakura bowed down, a full 90 degrees, directed towards Kanon.  
“Uh-“  
“Someone who is protecting our kind is a friend.”, the huge magical creature explained.  
“Oh!”, Kanon was still to perplexed to move.  
“This is going better than expected.”, she then thought. This time she kept it to herself.  
Sakura stood straight again in the meantime.  
“I thank you.”  
“N-no problem.”, Kanon blushed a bit.  
“Actually-“, Hiroko interfered, “We have been meanin’ to find ya, Sakura.”  
“Is that so?”  
The mother elbowed Kanon.  
“Right! Yeah! But maybe we should go somewhere else.”

Kanon happily took a bite from her meal. Her and the now three Sakura creatures went home with her. They’ve been sitting in the dining room. Except for Sakura, everyone had a plate full with food in front of them.  
“Okay.”, she swallowed her bite, “We’ve been to your village.”  
“So did I.”, Sakura told the manager.  
“Good. Means I don’t have to explain how destroyed it is.”  
“Yes.”  
“So. We also have village leader. But we call him “mayor”. He saw your village too.”  
“Mhm.”  
“And he will try to fix the damage and restore the temple and water system you guys had.”  
“How does he want to do that? He doesn’t know what our temple looked like.”  
“Yeah that’s why we were looking for you. So we can cooperate.”  
“I see.”  
“The thing is, he has to do some paperwork.”  
“What is that?”  
“Uh- Human stuff.”  
“Obviously.”  
“I mean- uh- We have this thing called “bureaucracy”. It has a lot to do with documents, which is printed on papers, hence why it’s called “paperwork”, and we use that to keep things in order. Like-“  
“Kanon.”, Hiroko interrupted her.  
“Yes?”  
“Yer explainin’ too much.”  
Sakura clearly wasn’t able to follow what the manager told her.  
“Okay. Let’s just say, paperwork can take a a lot of time.”  
“That means rebuilding the village will also take its time.”  
“Yeah. I mean, the building itself not so much, that might take a few weeks since it’s only one building. Right?”  
“Yes.”  
“Yeah. But just the approval that we can start rebuilding might take months. Until then you have to be homeless, or be as lucky as those two-“, Kanon pointed at her housemates, “-and find someone who gives you shelter.”  
“I have. Her name is Aoi Asahina.”  
“Really now?”, Kanon was in disbelief. Not only did she know Aoi, she was in the same class as her cousin, but she was surprised that at least one human person wasn’t scared of Sakura.  
“Okay, but why were you wanderin’ around town then?”, Hiroko asked.  
“I have lost her in the shopping district.”  
“So she might be looking for you?!”, Kanon jumped off of her seat.  
“No.”  
“No?!”  
“She gave me one of those human devices called a phone.”, Sakura presented a small flip phone to the others, “She showed me how to contact her. I have told her that I am fine.”  
“Oh my god...”, Kanon slowly sat back down again, letting out a sigh of relief.  
“So, to summarize it.”, the village leader put her phone away again, “The humans are willing to help us.”  
“Yes.”  
“But will they leave us alone afterwards?”  
That question struck Kanon.  
“Uh. I- I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe not?”  
“All we want is peace. We do not want humans to flood our village. They did some cruel things to us in the past.”  
“I know, I know, I was already told that...”, the manager poked her food.  
She thought of every possible thing to do to maintain the peace of the village. Building wired fences, forbidding humans to go into the forest in the first place, creating a Sakura military, it all didn’t really work out. If peace is disturbed once, it’s hard to bring it back.  
“To be fair-“, Yasuhiro joined the conversation, “- aside from those humans that invaded the first time, no other human was there when we went to see how the village was doin’.”  
“Except for me, the mayor, and two police men.”, Kanon corrected.  
“Yeah but they’re the ones to help us too, right?”  
“True. Maybe if you would talk to our mayor, he might find a solution.”, the manager suggested.  
“I do not want to talk alone with him.”  
“I can accompany you. He unofficially made me your representative for the humans anyway. If that’s alright of course.”  
“Well, it does sound helpful. Does that mean, we need one too?”  
“If you want.”  
Sakura looked over to Yasuhiro, who was enjoying his meal. He looked up from his plate, staring at the village leader.  
“Uh...”, Hiro swallowed the piece of food he had in his mouth, “What were ya talkin’ about?”  
He clearly stopped listening at one point.  
“I have decided to make you our ambassador.”, Sakura explained.  
“Wait, me?!”  
“Why not Hiroko?”, Kanon tried to help the obviously surprised Yasuhiro.  
“I already got a profession, honey.”, Hiroko told the manager, pointing at one of the fish symbols she had on the chest of her robe.  
“.... You’re a fisher...?”, Kanon guessed.  
“I have no idea what that is. But no, that means I’m a healer.”  
“Oh yeah, you don’t eat dead animals like humans do.”  
“Hagakure.”, Sakura included herself in the conversation again.  
“Y-Yeah?”  
“Are you willing to be the our ambassador?”  
“Uh-“, Hiro felt pressured. He anxiously looked between his mother, and the woman who gave him shelter. They didn’t know either what to do.  
Being an ambassador for something was job with tons of responsibilities. Managing all of those was an easy thing for Kanon to do. She had tons of manager experience after all. But for Hiro, it was something completely out of the possible.  
He was one of the handful of adults in the village who didn’t have a profession yet. He just wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He could have been a healer like his mother. But he was too scared to mess any of the healing processes up. Was it spells or water based healing, he didn’t dare to do more than just the basics, like treating cuts or bruises.  
He liked to tell fortunes. But that wasn’t a profession. He tried to make it one. Sakura (or any other Oogami for that matter) wasn’t impressed by that though.  
There weren’t that many options. Farmer, dressmaker, caretaker, none of those things were something Hiro wanted to do.  
Ambassador.  
Ambassador of the Sakura people.  
It sounded... huge. Like a big deal.  
“I don’t know...”, Yasuhiro quietly confessed, “It sounds like a lot to deal with.”  
“I understand.”, Sakura nodded, “Do you need more time to think about it?”  
She clearly wanted him to do the job. The leader probably has her reasons why she wanted Yasuhiro to do it so badly.  
He nodded, to give Sakura an answer.


	9. Leaders of Two Different Worlds

“I wonder how long it’ll take.”  
“Yeah.”  
Hiroko and another young woman were waiting outside of the mayor’s office. Kanon, Yasuhiro and Sakura were in a meeting with the mayor.  
The Sakura person sat at the end of a row of chairs, while the other person was leaning against the wall, hands behind her back.  
It has been quiet the entire time, until the other woman broke the silence with her remark.  
“So. How did ya find Sakura in the first place, Aoi?”, Hiroko asked, to start a conversation.  
“I accidentally stepped on her.”, Aoi sheepishly admitted.  
“Lemme guess. She was in her small form and ya didn’t see her right away?”  
“Yeah, exactly. I wanted to leave my home and she was lying in front of the doorstep.”  
“At least she made it outside of the shoppin’ district.”  
“Hm.”  
It became awkwardly silent again.  
“How did you end up with Kuwata’s younger cousin?”, Aoi asked the healer.  
“Kinda like how ya found Sakura. But we weren’t stepped on.”  
“Ah.”  
More silence.  
Aoi tapped with her foot out of boredom. Her and Hiroko didn’t dare to make eye contact.  
“How come you’re not inside with the others?”, Aoi tried to pick any topic the two could talk about.  
“I don’t really have a lot of use, I guess? I mean, I’m neither a leader, nor an ambassador. Or “ambassador-to-be” in my sons case.”  
“Oh, okay.”  
The conversation didn’t last long. Again.  
“What do you think they’re talking about?”  
“Are ya tryin’ to force a conversation?”  
“I mean, what else are we supposed to do? Awkwardly stare at each other in silence?”  
“Yer right, yer right. I can only guess what they’re talkin’ about, to be honest.”  
“Well, you do know more than me about like this village thing.”  
“True.”

“Alright, so,-“, the mayor got some papers out of a desk drawer, “I am glad you were able to show up so quickly, Ms....”  
“Oogami Sakura.”, the Sakura village leader introduced herself.  
“Ms Oogami.”, the mayor was quite nervous. But mainly because of the intimidating aura Sakura had, “I retrieved some information we need for restoring the destroyed parts of the village.”  
“.... Kanon.”, Sakura didn’t know what exactly the mayor meant, so she “asked” Kanon for help.  
“I assume you mean the costs and all of that, right?”  
“Exactly. Could you briefly describe what the temple looked like? How many rooms it had, how big it was, et cetera.”  
“Can I gave a brush and paper?”, Sakura asked.  
“Uh, well, I don’t have a brush, but I have a pen.”, the mayor handed her some white copy paper and a ballpoint pen. Of course, Sakura didn’t know what that pen was and how it worked.  
“You have to click there.”, the mayor pointed at the pen’s end. Sakura did what she was told to do. Her and Yasuhiro jumped a bit when the pen made a *click* noise.  
“And I can draw with that now?”  
“Yes.”  
Sakura started to sketch out the temple. A “This pen thing is strange.” escaped her mouth while doing so.  
After a few minutes she was done with her vague sketch of what the temple looked like. The drawing even had measurements. Luckily, Sakura people also used meters.  
“Okay... let me do some calculations.”, the mayor typed on his keyboard.  
“Oh.”, he then said.  
“What’s the matter?”, Kanon asked, knowing that this was something only she was able to take care of.  
“So, the budget was pretty tight to begin with-“  
“- meaning that you can’t build it without donations?”, Kanon finished the mayors sentence, “Yeah, I thought so.”  
Since the mayor didn’t object, the manager assumed she was right.  
“We have no other choice but asking for donations.”  
“Actually, we do have some money saving options.”  
Kanon, being the manager that she was, already thought that part out. She mentioned how huge machinery won’t be necessary, since the temple was built without human help once before. That alone was already a huge money saver. Plus Kanon volunteered to donate some of her own money. She was even willing to help the villagers with rebuilding everything.  
“The point is, we can’t really include a lot of humans. More humans means less peace. And asking for donations makes a huge fuss. People might think, when they donate, they have the right to disturb the village whenever they want to. Other than that, we don’t know how far Mr Ishimaru is with his investigation. If we’re lucky, the culprit who destroyed the temple in the first place has to pay for everything.”  
“But that might still take a while.”  
“That’s true. When was the temple build, Oogami?”  
“A few hundert years ago. Before that, we had not have any houses yet.”  
“I assume the whole village back then worked on the temple and all the other buildings, right?”  
“Yes.”  
“Would your village be willing enough to do that again?”  
Sakura nodded.  
“And we don’t need workers. More money saved.”  
“Ms Nakajima, I am fascinated by your management abilities.”, the mayor complimented her.  
“I wasn’t at Hope’s Peak for nothing.”  
“So that means we only have to provide building materials. The real question is: how are we gonna preserve the Sakura people’s peace?”  
“Unfortunately, I haven’t thought about that yet.”  
“Uh-“, Hiro suddenly spoke up, “So, like, since Oogami clearly wants me t’be an ambassador, I should maybe think of somethin’ too.”  
“So you accept the role of-“  
“Hold up.”, Yasuhiro interrupted his village leader, “I didn’t say that I wanted to be that right now. But I thought, if I’ll be one, this might be the startin’ point. Dependin’ on how things go. Also, sorry that I interrupted ya.”  
“You are forgiven.”  
“Thanks.”  
“What did you think of, Mr Hagakure?”, the mayor asked.  
“This might sound **really risky**. But what if we let a certain amount of humans in our village in exchange for us to visit the city. Like visitors.”  
Reading Sakura’s expression, she was skeptical.  
“Care to go further into that...?”, the mayor wanted to know more about the subject.  
“Well...”

_“Don’t tell mom but I’ve met two humans today!”, the young pre-blooming boy pet one of the chicken he had in his home’s backyard._   
_“They looked really cool. But also really weird.”_   
_The chicken just stared at him, tilting its head slightly._   
_“One of them wore something called “shoes”! They’re really strange like, ya wear them on yer feet! Can ya believe it?”_   
_“Bah-gawk!”_   
_“Yeah! ....”_   
_The young Hiro pet the animals back._   
_“I really wanna learn more about humans. But we’re not allowed to talk to them. I wonder were they live. All I’ve seen is the forest so far. Do ya think there’s more if I go far enough?”_   
_The bird slowly fell asleep, the pats on the back were relaxing._   
_“Huh. Yeah. Like, humans come in weird colors too, y’know? One of the humans I met had light blue eyes! The other one gold! I’ve never seen those colors before! Well, I guess their hair isn’t that special though... I wonder if there are more different colored eyes out there. All I know is green and pink. And well, now blue and gold.”_   
_Yasuhiro sighed._   
_“I don’t see why humans are so bad. The two I’ve met didn’t seem so bad... Especially the girl with the gold eyes. Her name’s Kanon. But I call her Flowersound. She was hurt so I helped her finding her brother. She was really nice to me. She was the one who explained to me what shoes are.”_

“I just think we have to get to know each other.”, Yasuhiro then explained.  
“Huh?”  
“I’ve learned so much about humans in the last few days! And I feel like if humans get to know #us, they might understand why we want peace in our village!”  
“That’s not a bad idea...”, Kanon thought out loud.  
“Ya think so too?!”, Hiro’s cheeks basically glowed up out of happiness. That sight made Kanon blush a bit.  
“Y-Yeah. Like, let’s take Asahina for example.”, the manager put her attention to Sakura, “I’m sure you want to show her the village too, right? And maybe let her stay for a night or two.”  
That caught Sakura off guard.  
“I... I think so. Yes.”, she answered, less sure than usual.  
“See? And, well, you can’t compare your village to our city. We have a way higher population and more room in general. So I feel like a committee would be fitting. They can decide if someone can visit your village, if they can stay, et cetera. And if there’s a human who does bad things, you can forbid them to ever come to the village ever again.”  
“That would be an entirely new profession.”, Sakura pointed out.  
“Yeah? There are some adults that don’t have one yet.”  
“Yasu, you shouldn’t be the one saying that.”, Kanon tried to stop Hiro from talking, “You’re still one of those adults.”  
“Oh yeah...”  
“You can also make special rules for, let’s say, theoretically, a human and a Sakura person start dating or something.”, Kanon put her attention back to Sakura and the mayor.  
“Dating?”  
“Yeah.”  
“What is that?”  
Kanon froze in shock.  
As if Sakura didn’t know what dating was.  
Maybe they had a different term for that.  
“Uh. Like- when they’re in love? I guess?”  
“Ah, I see. You humans call that “dating”?”  
“Yeah...?”  
“Well, there was never such a relationship like that.”  
“But that’s because you didn’t allow your people to talk to humans.”  
“That is true. But would that really happen?”  
“Uh I- it’s possible.”, Kanon hoped no one noticed her almost-slip up. She needed to stay professional.  
“To wrap it all up-“. , the mayor drew the attention back to him, “We fund the materials and to preserve the peace the Sakura people create a committee.”  
“Yes.”, Kanon nodded, “I guess the next step is to find the villagers and bring them back into the forest.”  
“I can take care of that.”, Sakura stood up from her seat, indicating that to her, the conversation was over.  
“Thank you for your help.”, she then bowed in front of the other three.

“So, what are these things called again?”  
“Donuts.”  
“They’re really delicious.”  
While waiting for Sakura, Yasuhiro and Kanon, Aoi decided to grab a snack for her and Hiroko.  
“I can’t believe you guys don’t know what donuts are!”  
“Well, they don’t really look like somethin’ that grew on a tree.”  
“Don’t you ever bake things in your village?”  
“We do, but not exactly that.”  
Suddenly the office door, the two had been waiting in front of, opened.  
“Ya guys finally done?”, Hiroko asked, mouth half full with a donut.  
“Yes.”, Kanon responded, “We just have to work out the details. But I said we can do that in private.”  
“Donut?”, Aoi asked, holding up a box of what used to be a six piece box of donuts.  
Kanon and Sakura happily grabbed one, while Yasuhiro was confused on what the round thing was.  
“Just try it.”, Kanon picked one for him and held it up to his face, while biting into her own.  
“Uh, okay...”  
Yasuhiro took a bite and was pleasantly surprised.  
“Humans have such good food.”, he commented.


	10. Restless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally get to some good YasuKanon action again ayeeee

“Hey, Flowersound.”, it was in the middle of the night again.  
“Yeah?”, the manager put her attention to the Sakura person. The two of them were sitting in Kanon’s room, her on her bed and him at the desk.  
Yasuhiro wasn’t able to sleep again, the pressure of him having to choose if he wants to be an ambassador was hindering him to get proper rest.  
“How were ya able to just accept being an ambassador?”  
“Uh-“, Kanon didn’t really know herself. It wasn't even official until Sakura declared that she needed an ambassador for her people too. Other than that, Kanon figured it did make the most sense since at the time since she was the only human involved with Sakura people. At least the only human the mayor knew of.  
“I mean, **someone’s** gotta do it, right?”  
“I guess, but... I dunno if I wanna be the one to do it as well.”  
“Are you really that scared?”  
“Yeah... I never expected to be offered such an important profession. I never had that much responsibility before.”  
“I see why you’re restless.”, Kanon decided to lay down, arms behind her head.  
“Am I puttin’ too much thought into it?”  
“No. It’s reasonable.”, she then let out a yawn.  
“Should I leave?”  
“Huh, why?”  
“Ya look like ya wanna sleep.”  
He wasn’t wrong about that. After the past few sleepless nights, Kanon finally had a night where she wasn’t bugged by any thoughts. But she didn’t wanna leave Hiro alone just like that. So the tried to fight the sleep for a bit. However, the tiredness was slowly taking over her body.  
“Nah, I’m fine.”, the manager noted, eyelids only half way open.  
“I don’t wanna keep ya awake.”  
“You did that the past few nights.”  
“Really?”  
Busted.  
“I mean-“, Kanon sat up, panicking and blushing a bit, “Well- It’s a new situation I needed to get used to, you know?”  
Hopefully that lie, which had a little bit of truth, was believable.  
“Oh yeah.”, seemed like it worked, “Same reasons why I wasn’t able to sleep as well.”, Hiro scratched his neck. Him saying that sounded more genuine than Kanon though. Maybe he was a good liar, at least that’s what Kanon unintentionally and secretly hoped for.  
She then shook her head to forget that thought.  
“What if I mess up really badly?”, Yasuhiro steered the conversation back to the original topic, “Or what if I disappoint everyone?”  
“I can help you out, you know? No one expects you to be the perfect ambassador right away.”  
“But... ya won’t stay with us in our village, right?”  
Yasuhiro clearly looked... sad. As if he wanted Kanon to stay, but knew it wasn’t going to happen.  
Kanon let herself drop back onto the pillow side of the bed.  
“Even if I don’t, I can come visit, can’t I?”  
“But-“  
“ _-what if I mess up when yer not here?_ ”, Kanon finished Yasuhiro’s sentence. She even tried to mimic his speech pattern, “It’s all just a matter of practice and knowledge.”  
“I guess yer right.”, Yasuhiro still didn’t sound confident. Of course, no one expected him to be the most confident magical being on earth within a second. But Kanon hoped he would have gotten a tiny bit of a boost.  
“Also-“, Yasuhiro tried to start a new conversation,” I was wonderin’ somethin’.”  
“What?”, Kanon asked, yawning.  
“Is there a reason why yer live alone in such a huge house?”  
“Uh-“, the manager stared at the ceiling, thinking of a response.  
“Yer home is bigger than any home I’ve ever seen in the village.”  
“Well, yeah.”, Kanon tried to keep her eyes open, “I mean, I never found someone to live with I guess? I was planning to live with Leon, but he got a girlfriend and then plans were kinda ruined. And I don’t feel like moving in with my parents again. I moved out for a reason.”  
“Ya don’t have anyone else?”  
“.... Not really. It does get pretty lonely, I guess.”  
“I could never do that.”  
“Living alone?”  
“Yeah. Plus I don’t wanna leave mom alone.”  
“Can I ask what happened to your dad? Or is that a taboo topic?”  
“I don’t really know who he is. I was told that he was one of the Sakura people that got in touch with a human and then mysteriously disappeared. I doubt that though.”  
“That explains-“, Kanon let out another huge yawn mid sentence “-Hiroko’s behavior.”  
“Yeah.”, Hiro scratched his neck, “Uh, are ya sure I can stay in yer room? Ya seem pretty tired.”  
“It’s-“, was the only thing Kanon was able to get out before her eyes finally shut due to the body being in desperate need for a good night’s rest.

Hiro was the first one to wake up.  
When Kanon fell asleep, he covered her up with her blanket and went back to the office chair and desk. He didn’t feel like walking back to his room just yet, so he just sat at the desk, staring into nothingness. All he wanted to do was to think about what happened earlier the day. But then sleep got him as well.  
“Hgnnn~”, Yasuhiro got up from his uncomfortable sleeping position and stretched his entire body. He turned around to check on his human housemate. Luckily, she was still sleeping.  
“Alright... Let’s just....”, the Sakura creature slowly approached the door but stopped for a second when Kanon suddenly moved.  
“...”, he waited for a moment.  
“... She was just repositionin’ herself...”, Hiro whispered to himself, continuing to walk towards the door to leave Kanon’s room.  
He stepped outside and slowly closed the door behind him.  
“It’s really quiet.”, Hiro wandered around a bit, “I guess I’m the only one awake, huh?”  
He decided to look around a bit until either his mom or Kanon woke up and kept his company. Yasuhiro decided to check out the pictures in the living room first. Him and his mother put them back on the wall on the day Hiroko had the outburst.  
“I’m wonderin’ how those were made...”, he took one photo off of the wall. It’s was one of Kanon and her brother-like-cousin. It didn’t seem that old considering they look pretty grown up on the picture.  
“Is that like... a tiny paintin’?”  
“Nope, that’s a printed picture.”, someone carefully snatched the framed photo out of Hiro’s hands.  
“Whoa-“  
“Did I scare you?”, the other person playfully raised an eyebrow.  
“N-No. Ya just surprised me, Flowersound.”  
“Oh yeah. If I had scared you, you wouldn’t be in that form.”, Kanon patted Yasuhiro’s shoulder while walking past him, towards the kitchen. She placed the picture on the coffee table while she was at it.  
“How long have ya been awake?”, Hiro asked, following the manager.  
“I’ve heard you sneaking out. Did you stay in my room for the night?”  
“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t plan to but I just fell asleep. And also sorry for wakin’ ya up.”  
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”, once they arrived in the kitchen, Kanon went straight to the coffee machine. She placed a cup in the machine and pressed the on button.  
“I’m just glad you got some rest though.”, she then put her attention back to Yasuhiro.  
“Yeah, I’m glad too.”  
“We do have a lot of work ahead of us. Building, creating a committee, et cetera.”, Kanon looked at Hiro, noticing his still unsure look on his face, “That is, if you want to do the ambassador thing. I won’t pressure you. But I can assure you I will stay with you for as long as you need me to.”  
Kanon turned back around to the coffee machine, since it was done heating up the water and ready to make some hot and fresh coffee. What Kanon didn’t expect though was a hug from behind.  
“Huh-?”, it could have only been Yasuhiro. A slight blush crept onto the manager’s cheeks.  
“Yasu, what-“  
“Thanks. For doin’ all of this. And keepin’ up with us.”  
“N-no problem...?”, Kanon wasn’t really sure what to do in this kind of situation. She couldn’t hug back, her arms could never bend that far. She didn’t want to grab Hiro’s hands, that would have been weird. She also didn’t want to tell the Sakura person to stop. That was a, rude and b, she **didn’t want it to stop**. But she also wanted some coffee and breakfast food.  
“Ah, sorry!”, Yasuhiro let go, as if he read her mind, “I’m sure ya wanna get... whatever that is.”, he pointed at the coffee machine.  
“C-Coffee.”, the human was still a bit startled by the kind act Hiro did. That didn’t stop her from explaining human culture. “You drink that, it wakes you up. Or, keeps you awake, depending on when you drink it.”  
She pressed a button and the caffeine filled beverage shot out of the dispenser into the mug.  
“How does it keep you awake though?”, Hiro asked.  
“Caffeine. It’s like. Uh. Part of what coffee is? I dunno.”  
“So, it’s kinda like when yer eat sweet things.”  
“Yeah! Except that this is the faaaaar opposite of sweet.”  
“Sour?”  
“No, the other opposite.”  
“Bitter?”  
“Yes, that. Some people like to put milk and/or sugar into their coffee. To make it less bitter.”  
“What’s milk?”  
“Do I really have to run down the entire food we eat?”  
Yasuhiro nodded with a sheepishly smile.  
“Oof.”, Kanon let out before walking up to the fridge.


	11. Hiding Feelings and Honesty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another underrated bby is making their appearence, who will it be?  
> Also my chapter titles always sound so #DEEP even though it's not oof

After explaining what milk, and also cows, were, Kanon finally got to drink her coffee and make some breakfast for herself and Hiro. The two of them sat down at the usual spot. On the sofa in the living room.  
“I was planning to go to your village again, if that’s okay.”, Kanon suddenly told Yasuhiro.  
“Uh, sure, yeah. I don’t see why we couldn’t go.”  
Kanon grabbed the remote from the table and switched on the TV. She remembered leaving it on the news channel. The manager hoped her father was able to do something about the massive reports.  
“The all-pink wearing strangers were spotted leaving our city-“, before the news anchor was able to finish their sentence, Kanon switched off the TV with a certain aggressiveness.  
“I’ll be right back.”, she then stormed off to her bedroom, to get her phone. She dialed her dad’s number in light speed.  
First ringing tone.  
Second.  
Third.  
“Hello, sweetheart-“  
“DON’T COME AT ME WITH THE SWEETHEART THING!”  
“... So you did see the news, huh?”  
“Yeah?!”  
“Listen sweetie, I did tell them to cut down the reports, but I wasn’t able to make them cut it down completely. I told them not to bring the same news over and over again. You do understand that we have to make money as well, right? Otherwise I couldn’t treat my little girl like a princess, right?”  
Kanon sighed. She really wasn’t in the mood to be pampered right now.  
“Are you alright, sweetie?”, Kanon’s father asked.  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just a bit upset.”  
“Is that it?”  
“... And maybe a bit stressed.”  
Kanon was very good in hiding her feelings. Temporarily.  
Being unexpectedly hit with responsibilities; Kanon was used to that. She was ready to expect the unexpected. But her “unexpected” was a cancellation of a meeting or someone from the baseball team falling sick. Even Leon having his temper tantrums over wanting to quit baseball every now and then weren’t a huge deal for Kanon.  
But the situation she was stuck in now?  
Next level. Supernatural level.  
“Do you want to talk about it?”, Kanon’s father offered.  
“Aren’t you at work?”  
“Yes, but I will always take my time to talk to my only child.”  
“Leon will be pissed to hear that.”, the young woman tried to cheer herself up a bit with some jokes.  
“I can’t possibly steal my brother’s child!”, her dad laughed.  
“True. I’ll let you do your work now.”  
“Alright. Don’t stress yourself too much, okay sunshine?”  
“Easier said than done. But I’ll try. Bye bye.”  
“Bye, sweetie.”  
Kanon hung up and went back to the living room.  
To her surprise, the TV was turned on again.  
“Did you do that?”, the manager pointed at the television while sitting back down on the sofa.  
“Yeah!”, Yasuhiro smiled, “I paid attention to what thing you pressed to turn it on.”  
“Ah.”, Kanon grabbed her mug and took a sip.  
“Are ya okay though? I’ve heard ya yellin’ at someone.”  
“Hm.”, Kanon swallowed the coffee and put the mug back down, “I called my dad. I asked him if he could stop showing you guys on TV. But that didn’t work.”  
“Well, at least we know that some of the villagers are goin’ back into the woods.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll get to see them later.”  
“I just hope they won’t react negatively when they see me...”  
“I’ll make sure to protect ya! ... At least I’ll try.”  
“I love how honest you are.”, Kanon giggles.  
“I can’t lie! And even if I tried, I’d expose myself right away!”  
“I didn’t raise ya to be a liar after all.”, a third voice joined the conversation. Kanon and Hiro put their attention to the doorframe the voice was coming from.  
“Mornin’ mom!”  
“Good morning, Hiroko!”, the two on the sofa greeted almost simultaneously.  
“Mornin’ ya two.”  
“Wait, lemme make you some breakfast.”, Kanon quickly stood up.  
“Ah, don’t worry, don’t worry.”, Hiroko waved, indicating for Kanon to sit back down again.  
“I can cut fruits myself.”, the mother then explained, “I figured out you kitchen so far.”  
“Please don’t touch anything unknown to you.”  
“I won’t, don’t worry.”  
Hiroko disappeared in the kitchen. She didn’t wear her pink robe like usual. Part of her back wasn’t covered by the white dress she always wore, so half the tattoo-like birthmark on Hiroko’s back was exposed.  
Kanon caught herself looking again. Her mind was immediately brought back to that one time she saw Yasuhiro shirtless.  
Kanon shook her head to get the thought out of it.  
“I’m glad mom’s finally willin’ to embrace human culture.”, Hiro smiled.  
“Whaddya mean? Cutting fruits is something you guys do too.”  
“No, I mean, yeah, it is. But I mean her memorizin’ how yer kitchen works.”  
“Oh that. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.”  
Kanon can’t get as excited as Yasuhiro at the moment.  
“Are ya okay?”, Hiro noticed the human’s strange behavior.  
“I’m just a bit all over the place. That’s all, don’t worry.”  
“Maybe ya need a break.”  
“I can take breaks when this is over.”

After breakfast, the group of three made their way to the village. They’ve noticed several other Sakura people wandering around in the forest. When asked, one of them told them that they do that to confuse humans that might have followed them. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind Kanon.  
“Quite a lot of our people have retuned already...”, Hiroko pointed out once her, her son, and the manager arrived at their destination.  
“Then let’s see who’s here.”, Kanon was determined to get to know more villagers. And to see if they would get angry at her, being the human she was, for “intruding” the not-really-secret village.  
The first spot they checked out was the fields. It looked like a regular field with wheats and sunflowers growing. A small part of it seemed to be a victim of Towa’s intrusion though. A Sakura person tried to save as much as they can.  
“Seems like there won’t be any corn this this season...”, they thought out loud. Their voice was pretty high pitched.  
“Hey, Bandai!”, Yasuhiro greeted. The other Sakura person, presumably a farmer, turned around.  
“Hello, Hagakure.”, they greeted back, not as enthusiastically, “Who’s that human?”, they instantly asked.  
“That’s Flowersound. She wants to help us rebuilding the temple.”  
“Hello.”, Kanon shyly waved.  
“That’s Daisaku Bandai.”, Hiro continued introducing, “He’s our farmer!”  
“A-ah!”, Kanon exclaimed. The high voice Bandai had kind of confused her. Then again, the thought Oogami was a guy.  
“I see.”, Bandai smiled weakly, “I’m sorry, I can’t really bring myself to show much enthusiasm.”  
“Yeah, ya said somethin’ about the corn.”  
The farmer nodded.  
“I don’t know what happened, but most of the corn was destroyed. There’s still enough for the birds, but not for us until next season.”  
“I know what happened.”, Kanon looked at the destroyed area. She can tell that huge machinery like bulldozers ran the corn over.  
“But my information won’t have any use.”, the manager added. From the looks of it, the corn looked like any other corn a human would eat as well.  
“I mean, at least they didn’t destroy too much.”, Bandai started picking up the dead corn plants, “We won’t starve.”  
“We’ll let ya work.”, Hiro waved and turned around, ready to go somewhere else.


	12. Finally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone got busted i guess

A few meters away from the field, the huge pile of dirt blocking the natural water system was located. Some villagers have started to shovel away the dirt with their bare hands and some buckets.  
“Do they not have shovels...?”, Kanon thought out loud.  
“What are shovels?”, Yasuhiro must have heard her question.  
“So you have buckets but no shovels?”, the manager didn’t know what to think anymore. Of course, a bunch of people living in the forest their entire life wouldn’t know what technology was, or simpler things like pens. But a shovel? **A shovel**? Kanon sighed.  
“So. A spoon, right?”, she tried to explain.  
“A spoon?”, Hiro tilted his head. Hiroko quietly joined him.  
“A spoon. A shovel is kinda like a spoon. But bigger. Humans use shovels to dig holes. Or get rid of mountains of dirt.”, Kanon pointed at the pile of soil and planks.  
“Oooh.”, the mother-son duo nodded their heads in unison.  
“... So should we work with shovels then?”, Yasu asked. Kanon nodded her head, almost too aggressively. Restoring the village seemed to be even more difficult now.  
“Let’s take care of the shovels later though. Let them work until then.”, the human decided to continue the walk through the Sakura village.  
The three of them decided to stop by the Hagakure’s home and relax for a moment. Except that Kanon got herself some paper and, well, not really a pen, but a brush and ink.  
“I should have brought my own stuff...”, Kanon thought while writing down notes. She had to be extra careful not to smear anything. She let out an exhausted breath.  
“Where are the other two?”, she then thought out loud. The two Sakura people that kept Kanon’s company the entire time, went outside to the chicken like creatures. It’s been about half an hour and they haven’t returned yet. Feeding chickens didn’t take **that long** , right? And it also didn’t require **two people**.  
“Hmm...”, Kanon tapped her foot on the ground, thinking.  
“So, the shovels, new wood-“, her thought process was interrupted by a knocking at the front door. Since the actual house owners probably didn’t hear it, Kanon went for it herself.  
She immediately took a step back once she opened the door. A huge, muscular figure stood right in front of her.  
“Ah, Oogami.”, Kanon bowed a bit.  
“Hello, Nakajima.”  
“Hey Kanon!”, a voice behind Sakura popped up.  
“Hi, Aoi.”, Kanon waved at the source of the second voice, “Come in, I guess?”  
The manager wasn’t so sure if she could just invite two people into a house that wasn’t hers, but at the same time she couldn’t say “Leave, bye.” to the huge (and scaring) village leader.  
“A have heard from other villagers that they have spottet a human accompanying the Hagakure’s.”, Sakura explained while taking a seat at one of chairs at the table Kanon had sat before, “I figured it must have been you.”  
“Did the others see me as a threat or what?”, Kanon sat down on the other side of the table, facing Sakura.  
“Well, except for the one huge dude who picked up corn,-“, Aoi joined the conversation, sitting down next to Sakura, “-everyone was like “Hey, uh, there’s a human? You might wanna check on that.”. So I guess they were pretty suspicious.”  
“Yeah, sure.”, Kanon answered while grabbing her notes.  
“Speaking of the Hagakure’s, where are they?”, Sakura asked.  
“Outside, feeding the birds.”, Kanon stood up again, planning to go outside and see what Hiroko and Yasuhiro were doing.  
“I’ll be right back.”, she told Sakura before leaving the house.

“I still-“  
“Hey you two.”, Kanon unintentionally interrupted Hiro.  
“Hey Flowersound...”  
“Hi, sweetie.”, the Sakura creatures greeted back in union. Yasuhiro’s greeting however wasn’t really energetic, quite the opposite actually.  
“I just wanted to let you know that Oogami stopped by.”, Kanon pointed at the door that lead inside.  
“I’ll handle that.”, Hiroko walked past Kanon, “Talk to her, alright?”, the mother turned around, facing her son, before leaving him and the manager alone. Yasuhiro nodded.  
“Good.”, Hiroko said before entering.  
“What’s the matter?”, Kanon asked right away.  
“Well, uh...”, Hiro nervously scratched his neck, “I’m thinkin’ of accepting Sakura’s offer...”  
Kanon’s eyes widen in surprise. But at the same time she knew that wasn’t the end of the sentence.  
“But...?”, she tried to squeeze the rest out of Yasuhiro.  
“I can’t do this alone.”  
Oh wow. Nothing new.  
“I know!”, the manager laughed, “We’ve talked about this many times.”  
“I just wanted to make sure again!”, the grown Sakura creature blurted out.  
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. I keep what I said.”  
Yasuhiro smiled widely. “I’m glad ya were the one who found us!”, he added to his smile.  
Kanon wasn’t able to look away, or give any reaction for that matter. She was mesmerized by the genuine happy smile the Sakura person in front of her said. She wanted to see that smile every day for the rest of her life. But she was sure that might not be a possibility.  
Suddenly the smile disappeared from Hiro’s face. Kanon snapped out of it right away.  
“What’s that noise...?”, Yasuhiro pointed out. It sounded really metallic and heavy, some squeaks from probably lack of oil here and there. Crackling noises, as if more wood was broken down. It got louder every millisecond. Panicked screams from the villagers passed by as well.  
After listening to it for a moment, Kanon was able to identify what exactly those noises were.  
“They’re back-!”, she exclaimed. The manager stormed inside, through the house, and back out. While she did that she took her phone out of her pocket and quickly opened an app. When she was running towards the source of the noises, several other Sakura creature ran past her, scared, terrified even.  
“Where are you running?!”, Bandai stopped in front of the human.  
“I’m saving your village!”, she screamed, overshadowing the other screams of terror.  
She continued running until she reached the almost completely destroyed temple.  
Behind it were huge construction machines, one of them ready to give the temple the rest.  
“STOP IT!”, Kanon bravely jumped onto the ruins and stretched her arms out to the sides. The machine stopped and turned away, to not accidentally hurt Kanon.  
“Out of the way, missy!”, the worker yelled, “We have to get rid of this!”  
“You have no right to do so!”, the human ambassador didn’t move a bit.  
“Look, we have work to do! Get outta the way!”  
“She said, ya have no right!”, a second protester joined Kanon on the remainings of the temple, doing the same stance as her. Kanon glanced over her shoulder and spotted her ambassador partner Yasuhiro.  
“Alright! Alright!”, the worker stepped out of his machine, whining, “Before more people decide to be a god damn human wall, talking to you pink haired lady-“, the worker pointed past Kanon and Hiro. They turned their heads and saw Hiroko, who tried to defend her village as well, but was spottet before she could get onto the ruins.  
“- imma get the boss.”, the worker finished his sentence.  
He left his construction machinery to get the boss. His co-workers had turned their machines off as well. The two ambassadors dropped their arms while Hiroko joined them on he “temple”. It was more or less just the stairs that led up to the floor and some pieces of walls.  
“Alright, alright.”, a voice popped up behind the machines, “Who is disturbing my project?”, a man with long, blueish hair, pale skin and some stubble on his chin appeared behind the machine, that was about to destroy the remaining parts of the temple. Kanon was familiar with that face.  
“Haiji Towa.”, she called out in a stern voice.  
“Oh. It’s you. Uh, the Nakajima kid.”  
“I’m not a “kid”, old man.”  
“Was that supposed to hurt me? What do you want?”, Haiji was clearly annoyed that he wasn’t able to continue his project.  
Him and Kanon knew each other because of Kanon’s dad. She used to accompany her father sometimes to work when she was younger, and she sometimes ran into Haiji and his dad. The Towa company made all sorts of electronics, TV cameras, microphones, etc. included. Kanon never had a good feeling about the Towas.  
“I want you to take your henchmen and leave.”, the manager waved the workers and Haiji away.  
“Hahaha, cute.”, Haiji laughed, crossing his arms, “No. Not a chance.”  
“Stay calm, Kanon.”, she told herself.  
“You’re aware you’re doing something pretty illegal, right?”, she tried to fight Towa with logic.  
“I know. The police even questioned me, but I was able to lie my way out. They had not enough proof to frame this on me.”  
This is what Kanon wanted to hear. But that wasn’t enough for her.  
“So you’re admitting to be responsible for this? Literally destroying homes for some project of yours?”  
Haiji shook his head in annoyance.   
“You sound exactly like the police. Yeah, I did all of this. I need to earn my money, just like you do.”  
“You won’t after this.”, Kanon lifted her phone she held in her hand the entire time, the outer camera pointed at Haiji.  
“Did you-?!”, Haiji immediately realized what Kanon did. She secretly recorded the entire conversation.  
“GIVE ME THAT PHONE!”, Haiji yelled in panic.  
“Yasu, bring that to the police!”, Kanon pressed the stop button and basically shoved her phone in Hiro’s face. He nodded, grabbed the phone and transformed into his small self to fly away.  
“Y-You know you recorded me without me knowing?”, Haiji tried to intimidate Kanon, “That’s illegal as well!”  
“I can pay that fine.”, Kanon smiled, “That won’t hurt my wallet.”


	13. Lonely Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm still not done

After that incident, time went by relatively fast. Sometime later that day, what felt like a few seconds, the police arrived to take in the criminal. He didn’t even try to run away and hide, he knew very well that he was fucked.  
A few weeks later, every villager had returned and tried for the second time to rebuild their home.  
A few months later, the temple was halfway done, the water system was up and running again, even corn was available again. And most importantly, Haiji was charged as guilty and had to pay for **everything** he destroyed. That wasn’t his only penalty of course. He got lucky that the Sakura people didn’t know what money was and how to work with that, otherwise he would have had to pay them compensations as well. Kanon however didn’t get in trouble for secretly recording Haiji.  
Kanon basically lived with Yasuhiro and Hiroko. She sometimes went back to her actual home, since she still had some responsibilities as a landlord. Yasuhiro sometimes accompanied her.  
Winter finally arrived. Snow already fell, but it wasn’t enough for it to stay yet. Less and less villagers were seen walking around or rebuilding the temple. And when someone spotted them, they usually showed signs of being extremely exhausted, or eating. It even hit the mother-son duo Kanon lived with. They barely did anything, the exzessive yawning was getting kinda annoying after a while.  
“Uh, should I head home and get you guys some coffee?”, Kanon asked.  
“No.”, Hiro yawned, leaning his head on his arm on the table, “It’s winter after all.”  
Kanon didn’t know what to do with that explanation.  
“Well, yeah. But that’s not a reason to be extremely tired all the time.”  
“It is though...?”, Yasuhiro, even though his eyes were halfway closed, looked really confused.  
“Don’t tell me ya don’t have hibernation.”, Hiroko joined the conversation from the other side of the room. She seemed to be a bit less tired than her son.  
“We have no reason for it...?”, Kanon turned around halfway.  
“Oh dear...”, the mother rubbed her eyes, “We should’ve asked beforehand.”  
Kanon thought about it for a second. She did notice a few days ago that the flowers on the Sakura peoples heads were closing a bit. They didn’t disappear though, like actual flowers during winter.  
She glanced over at the almost asleep Yasuhiro and saw that the flowers were almost closed all the way. That probably made him and every other villager tired.  
“Look sweetie-“, Hiroko walked up to Kanon, “We basically sleep all day, except for a short while. We usually eat a bit when we wake up and then go back to bed again. Winter doesn’t really give in any energy, so we sleep.”  
“I know what hibernation is.”, Kanon explained, “I just didn’t know you guys did it. It actually makes sense though that you would be sleeping during winter.”  
“How come humans don’t do that as well?”  
“Our bodies aren’t fit enou-“, Kanon was interrupted by a blunt noise, something hard hitting the wooden table to be precise. The two women looked over to Yasuhiro, who had completely fallen asleep by now. The noise was his forehead making friends with the table.  
“He must be super ready for hibernation if **that** didn’t wake him up.”, Kanon joked.  
Suddenly the supposedly sleeping Sakura creature jerked up with his entire upper body, scanning his surroundings with his eyes half open.  
“I was joking too soon.”, the manager thought out loud.  
“... What happened?”, Hiro quietly asked confused.  
“Let’s bring you to bed, come on.”, Kanon held out an arm to support her ambassador-partner.

“Ya really gonna leave durin’ winter?”, Yasuhiro asked, putting on some extra yutakas and kimonos. He explained that it’s the Sakura people’s winter wear, to stay warm during the cold days and especially nights.  
“What else should I do?”, Kanon answered with a counter question, sitting on Hiro’s bed, “It’ll get quite boring for me if everyone’s asleep for most of the time.”  
“Yeah, true.”, the magical being yawned while tying the last bow on his gown.  
“Ya really gonna come back in spring?”, he turned around, facing Kanon. He clearly had some hope in his tired eyes.  
“Of course!”, she smiled widely. Hiro returned that smile.  
“Then I hope winter goes by really fast.”, Yasuhiro sat down on the bed, possibly because he was about to fall asleep again.  
“Get some good rest, Yasu.”, Kanon leaned in for a hug. Yasuhiro immediately hugged back, pretty much hiding her with his huge sleeves, and leaned his head on hers.  
“Don’t fall asleep on me.”, Kanon immediately muffled into the layers of fabric against Hiro’s chest.  
“I won’t.”, he assured her.

One ringing tone.  
Two ringing tones.  
“Hey Lil’ Sis! ‘s been a while!”  
“Hey Leon!”, Kanon had called her brother-like-cousin to ask him to pick her up from the forests entrance. She would have usually walked home on her own, but this time she had some luggage on her. And even though there wasn’t any snow, it was still pretty cold.  
“Are you free right now?”, she asked.  
“Yeah, why?”  
“Can you come pick me up from the forest?”  
“Did something happen?”  
“Yeah, hibernation.”  
“They sleep during winter?”  
“That’s exactly what it means.”  
“I’ll be right there.”  
About twenty minutes later a red car stopped in front of the manager. She threw her luggage on the backseats of the car and sat down in the front, on the passenger seat next to Leon.  
“Have you left your girlfriend at home, huh?”, Kanon asked jokingly.  
“Oh, she’s not my girlfriend anymore.”, Leon answered on a monotone voice.  
“Excuse me, what?!”, that statement clearly scared the manager.  
“Yeah, she’s my fiancée now.”, the older cousin laughed.  
“OH, YOU FUCKER!”, Kanon really wanted to slap Leon for that prank, but at the same time she didn’t want to end up in a car accident.  
“Sorry, I had to. But for real, she’s at work.”  
“Congrats on the engagement though.”  
“Thanks!”  
It was silent for a short while. Ignoring the hard rock/punk music coming from the radio. It was probably Leon’s personal mix.  
“Hey, you okay?”, Leon asked his younger cousin.  
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I be?”  
“Yer never that quiet.”  
“Hm... I just feel like I missed out on a few events. Some birthdays, your engagement, y’know?”  
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would have texted ya. But ya don’t have any reception in the middle of the woods, right?”  
Kanon nodded in the hopes Leon saw it in the corner of his eyes.  
“At least yer home for Christmas and New Years.”  
“Didn’t you forget something?”  
“Yeah, and my birthday, but I didn’t wanna bring that in. Sounds a bit narcissistic.”  
“You **are** a bit narcissistic.”  
“Ya got me there.”  
The two cousins laughed a bit.  
“Wanna eat dinner at my place?”, Leon asked.  
“Yeah, sure. My fridge is empty anyways.”

Kanon had been mindlessly watching TV the entire time. Dinner wouldn’t be cooked until Leon’s fiancée returned from work.  
“Hey, hey! Brighten up a bit!”, Leon joined Kanon on the sofa. He had been cleaning up a bit. His cousin offered to help but he told her that she was a guest, and guests didn’t need to help with cleaning.  
“What do I need to lighten up for?”, Kanon was clearly confused by her Big Bro’s statement.  
“Ya look so gloomy again!”  
“I do?”  
“Yeah!”  
“I guess I’m just sad that I had to leave the village...”  
“But only for the winter! Come on, there’s no snow yet, let’s go out and throw some balls! Like when we were teenagers!”, Leon tried his best to cheer his Lil’ Sis up.  
“And you won’t throw a hissy fit?”, it seemed to work.  
“The only thing I’ll throw is that baseball, and that at least 100 km/h!”  
“Your standards used to be higher than that.”  
“I haven’t been practicing for a while, okay?”  
They did what Leon suggested until his soon-to-be wife came home from work. It did help Kanon to lighten up for a short while. But once he saw Leon embracing his partner in a loving way, the happiness was gone again, and Misses Gloom’n’Doom returned.  
“Hey Sayaka.”, the manager tried her best to hide the fact that she was in a rather negative mood again.  
“Hi Kanon!”, Leon’s fiancée embraced Kanon in a quick hug, “Are you alright? You don’t seem to be quite happy right now.”  
How come everyone noticed? Kanon was good in hiding her feelings. No one was able to read her. But for some reason it wasn’t working right now. Kanon was about to freak out.  
“God, I don’t know what’s up with me!”, she snapped.  
“Whoa...!”, Sayaka immediately took a step back.  
The manager quickly realized her mistake.  
“I-I’m sorry.”, she sighed, “I-I just really don’t know what’s up with me right now. I think it’s better if I go home. I can get take out.”

“Thanks for bringing me home.”, Kanon unbuckled her seatbelt.  
“Anything for ya, Lil’ Sis. I’m just a bit sad ya don’t wanna stay for dinner.”  
“I’m really sorry about that. Maybe some other time when I’m feeling better.”  
“Sure, yeah. Call me if ya need anything.”  
“I will.”, the younger cousin exited the car, grabbed her bag from the backseat and waved Leon goodbye.  
While on her way inside the huge house, she grabbed the mail she got over the past few weeks. Luckily, it wasn’t that much and nothing too serious as well.  
Kanon opened the front door with a sigh. She knew she would be all on her own again. No company. Nothing. Just herself and pure emptiness were waiting behind that front door.  
After entering and taking off her shoes, Kanon dropped her luggage in the washing room (with the premise that she’d be taking care of it later), and the mail on her desk in her bedroom. She then dropped herself onto her bed. The manager forgot how comfortable her bed was. Not that the bed she had in the village was uncomfortable, that was just a _different kind_ of comfortable.  
Kanon missed the village already. And it hasn’t even been 5 hours when she left it.  
But was it really the village she missed? She as kinda glad to be back in a world that had electronics and phone reception.  
It wasn’t that late yet, but Kanon felt the need to sleep. The only problem was, something was keeping her awake. However that something wasn’t even in the same house as her anymore.

Kanon felt miserable. It was three in the morning, she didn’t manage to get any sleep, her hunger was gnawing on her, and she still didn’t know the reason for her gloomy mood.  
She grabbed her phone to check the time again, for what felt like the millionth time. She had it with her in the village, even though she had no need for it. It was turned off most of the time.  
The only time she needed it was to take pictures. Or videos, that would be used as evidence against someone. But that only happened once so far.  
Kanon went through the pictures she took over the past months. At first, the villagers were scared by the device. They didn’t know what it was, of course, and what it did. Taking pictures was a new kind of human magic for them. But eventually they loved it. Kanon even promised to get the pictures printed, so she can hand them to the villagers. While swiping through the pictures, the ambassador stumbled across a lot of selfies she took with her housemates. She took extra time to look at those.  
She slowly understood what she was missing. Kanon didn’t swipe for quite a while. She stopped at a selfie of herself and the Sakura person she had met for the first time many, many years ago. The way he smiled on the picture was what always got Kanon’s attention. The longer she stared at the smile, the more she felt lonely. Even homesick, and she was at home.  
“Ugh.”, Kanon decided to turn off her phone before the self loathing took over her mind completely.


	14. Company

Eventually, the manager fell asleep. While sleeping, she must have dropped her phone on the floor. Luckily it didn’t break.  
Kanon got up, the first thing she noticed about herself was the grumbling coming from her stomach. She picked up her phone and wandered into the kitchen, in the hopes of finding something to munch on.  
“Let’s see...”, Kanon put her phone aside and checked the cupboards.  
“A-hah!”, she pulled out a box of coffee. Unfortunately, that was pretty much the only thing she would have for breakfast.  
“I guess I gotta go to a cafe or something...”, she told herself, preparing the coffee machine for at least one hot beverage before leaving. For Kanon, it felt like an eternity until the machine had warmed up. The coffee actually coming out of the machine took twice as long to her. Time was just slow. Kanon sighed. She glanced out of the window. The street was completely covered in snow. It was finally thick enough to stay on the ground and not disappear right away.  
“It’s gonna be a long winter...”

After the cup of morning coffee, Kanon got completely dressed and went out to get to the nearest cafe for some good breakfast.  
To distract her mind from a certain person, she decided to listen to some music on her way there. But before she was even able to put her headphones in, a male voice greeted her from behind.  
“Ah, good morning, Kanon!”, a bit to enthusiastic for Kanon’s taste, especially at this time of day. Must be Kiyotaka.  
“Morning Kiyotaka.”, Kanon turned around half way. She noticed Kiyotaka had Mondo with him.  
“What are ya up to?”, the carpenter asked the manager once the couple caught up to her. They continued walking.  
“Just getting some breakfast.”  
“What a coincidence, we too.”, Mondo yawned. He wasn’t really a morning person, unlike his boyfriend.  
“You’ve been in the Sakura village for the past months, right?,” Kiyotaka wanted to know, “How is everything going there?”  
“Quite... good.”, Kanon still had a bit of a hard time talking about the village, considering she wanted to forget about it temporarily, “The temple is halfway done. It takes a bit longer when you don’t have any machinery, y’know?”  
“Ah, I see. At least it’s coming together again! What about your housemates? How are they doing?”  
“They’re sleeping, most likely.”  
“Of course. It’s still quite early.”  
“Actually, that’s not really the problem. It’s winter.”  
“Winter...?”, Kiyotaka thought about the statement for a second, “Are they hibernating?”  
“Yup. I’ve returned to my “human home” for the time being.”  
“Must be pretty lonely, huh?”, Mondo pointed out. That hit Kanon right in the face. She nodded silently. The statement had an even worse impact on her, coming from someone who’s in a relationship and didn’t live alone. The chances were high that the couple wanted to go to the same cafe as her, so Kanon decided on the spot that she would take her food home.

“Boring...”, the manager had the TV remote in her hand, “Meh....”, she was switching through the programs. She had eaten her food on the sofa, but didn’t bother to bring the dirty dishes to the kitchen.  
“At least the reports on the others died dow-DAMN IT!”, Kanon thought about the Sakura people again. And she tried to distract herself with watching TV after all.  
The ambassador, feeling angry at herself for thinking about **it** again, but also being sad at the same time, took her dishes and walked into the kitchen. She opened her dishwasher and put the plate and silverware in. Before she was able to close the machine, the doorbell rang.  
“Hm?”, Kanon turned around, closing the dishwasher’s door with her foot, and walked out to see who wanted to visit her at this time of day. Which was around noon by now. So the breakfast was partly lunch as well.  
Kanon opened the door and was greeted by a waving, widely smiling Aoi.  
“Oh hi.”, she greeted, a bit confused.  
“Hi Kanon! Mind if I come in?”, Aoi asked.  
Kanon couldn’t find a reason why Aoi **shouldn’t** come in. The manager felt like the swimmer was the best company to be around right now, considering the emotional state Kanon was in. The two of them didn’t have the closest relationship, their status could be defined as “former schoolmates”. Although Kanon did manage a few of Aoi’s sport related events back at Hope’s Peak Academy.  
“Yeah, sure, come in.”, she stepped aside to let Aoi in.  
“Thanks!”, the brown haired girl took of her shoes and waited for Kanon to guide the way. It wasn’t her first time being in the managers home. Over the past months, when Kanon returned from the village for a few days, Sakura sometimes accompanied her, and Aoi didn’t want to miss out on that. But the only two rooms Aoi knew in that huge house were the dining room and one of the bathrooms.  
“Have a seat.”, Kanon offered once the two women made it into the living room. Aoi sat down on the sofa right away.  
“You wanna drink something?”  
“What do you have?”  
“Coffee and tea.”  
“Nah, something cold would be nice.”  
“Yeah, uh, tap water it is then...”, Kanon still hadn’t gone grocery shopping.  
“Ah, I’m fine with that!”, but Aoi didn’t seem to mind.  
Kanon quickly got a glass of water for her guest before sitting down next to her.  
“Not to sound rude or anything-“, the manager tried to get Aoi’s attention, “-but what brought you here in the first place?”  
Aoi took a sip of water before answering Kanon’s question.  
“Oh yeah! So I went to the village earlier today and no one was there. I even knocked at your house’s door, but no one opened.”  
“Actually, that’s not-“, Kanon tried to explain herself, but her guest wasn’t done talking.  
“So I went back and texted Leon once I had reception. He told me you came back home.”  
“Well, obviously.”  
“I wanted to ask what’s going on.”  
“Oh. Yeah, uh, they’re hibernating. You’re like the millionth person I tell this.”  
“Oooooooh! Sakura must have forgotten to tell me.”  
“Actually, they thought humans hibernate too. That’s why they didn’t even bother in the first place.”  
All Aoi was able to contribute was a small laughter. Kanon wished she could have done the same.  
For some reason the Sakura topic wouldn’t leave her alone. Everyone she ran into was curious to know what was going on the forstest and why the human ambassador wasn’t there anymore, after spending several months away from human society. The more she was encountered with it, the sadder she became. And it was very noticeable. Her abilities to hide feelings quite well temporarily failed her. She finally cracked.  
“Hey, Kanon, are you alright?”, Aoi noticed the managers strange behavior. Kanon shook her head, holding back tears, gripping her tights to a point that they almost ripped.  
“I... I really wanna go back.”, she whispered, “I... I really miss Yasu.”  
“Oh wow...”, Aoi patted Kanon’s back, “That must be pretty serious, huh?”  
“ I don’t know what to do!”, tears had finally build up so much that they rolled down Kanon’s cheeks, “I really tried to distract myself but I keep thinking about this stupid village and the stupid people that live there!”  
“Hey, hey...”  
“I never realized how lonely I really was...”  
“You know what?!”, Aoi stood up and held out a hand, “I wanna cheer you up! Let’s do something fun!”  
“Thanks, but...”, the crying woman wiped away some tears with her sleeve, “You don’t have to pity me.”  
“I’m not! I want you to smile again and forget about that pink forest related stuff for a while, y’know?”  
Kanon wanted to question why Aoi was doing that or why she cared in the first place. On the other hand, Kanon could need some company that wasn’t a couple that was currently dating, or engaged. She had nothing to lose either.  
The manager gave in and agreed to Aoi’s offer.


	15. Spring Arrived

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the late upload, I've been to a con and wasn't home to update in time. Also I apologize for this chapter being this short, but I will upload another One Shot tomorrow (May 22nd) so stay tuned! (It's another YasuKanon One Shot, Yasuhiro meeting Kanon's parents to be precise.)

Spending time with Aoi actually helped Kanon to forget that village for a while. Throughout the entire winter, actually. They’ve met up at least once almost every week. Kanon was even able again to face her brother-like-cousin without being lovesick or jealous over his relationship with Sayaka.  
Spring had arrived, most of the flowers weren’t in full bloom yet, but they were present.  
“Ya seem t’be really excited to go back to yer second home, huh?”  
“I didn’t sleep last night. At all. That should answer your question.”  
“For someone who didn’t sleep yer pretty hyped.”  
Leon, the good older cousin he was, brought his younger cousin to the forest. They sat in his car, Kanon barely able to contain her excitement.  
“Alright, we’re here.”, the former baseball player stopped on the side of the road.  
“Thanks Big Bro!”, Kanon unbuckled herself and stepped out of the car in the speed of light. She then went to the back door to get her luggage.  
“Hey, don’t forget my weddin’, yeah?”, Leon reminded her.  
“I have my calendar with me, don’t worry.”  
“Feel free to bring Hiro as well.”  
“Sure.”  
“And if he’s not yer boyfriend by then, I’ll make sure he’ll become that at my wedding.”  
“You’re not gonna play cupid, Leon. Especially not on your wedding.”  
“Then make it happen yourself!”  
The pair of cousins laughed.  
“Call me when yer back in the city.”, Leon then said to break the laughter.  
“I will, don’t worry. Bye bye!”  
“Bye Lil’ Sis!”  
Kanon closed the door and gave Leon one last wave. He drove off, leaving Kanon in front of the huge forest.  
She took a deep breath and smiled before entering the woods.  
Kanon wasn’t sure at first if she should return right at the beginning of spring. The flowers weren’t blooming, so the chance that the Sakura people were still sleeping was high. But at the same time, Sakura people only had flower elements to them.  
So she either had luck and they finally awoke from their slumber (fully or partly didn’t matter), or she would find herself in a abandoned-like village.

The walk to the village was still pretty long, Kanon had been heading to one direction for about twenty minutes now. She should arrive soon though. On her was she met a few Sakura people already, luckily. They all greeted her with a bright smile.  
The ambassador soon arrived at the “entrance”’of the village.  
The “entrance” was a new thing. It was part of the newfound committee the village had. It consisted of two Sakura people, guarding the only obvious way in. It was located right at the temple, so the Oogami family wasn’t too far away either.  
Kanon spotted the entrance from afar. She really wanted to run towards it, but her luggage pretty much stopped her from doing that. So it was another few minutes of walking instead. She also noticed that some villagers had continued working on restoring the temple.  
“I wonder when they got out of hibernation...”, Kanon thought out loud. She quickened her pace. She was really excited to finally arrive again. She really wanted to drop her bags and sprint. But she couldn’t just leave her belongings in the woods, although she was certain that if a Sakura person had found the luggage, they would have brought it to her. But Kanon didn’t want to bet on that.  
The two Sakura people guarding the entrance spotted Kanon from far away. They waved, shouting happy greetings.  
“Hey there, Miss ambassador!” “Hi Kanon!”  
“Hey you two!”, Kanon greeted back once she arrived in front of the gate.  
“How was your winter?”, the one sitting on the left side asked.  
“Long. Cold.”  
“What do you humans do during winter anyways?”  
“Just human things I guess?”  
“Like human work?”  
“Yeah, exactly. Speaking of work, how’s my ambassador partner doing?”  
“He woke up two days ago, he hasn’t done much yet.”  
“At least he’s awake.”, Kanon thought.  
“Well, I might as well check up on him!”, she then told the entrance keepers.  
“Sure, be our guest.”  
Kanon made a few steps onto the village and was stopped by someone calling her name.  
“Nakajima!”, the voice was deep and pretty rough. She turned around halfway, to face the source of the voice.  
“Hello Oogami!”, the human smiled.  
“I am happy to see you back. I was told that humans do not hibernate.”  
“Yeah, that’s kinda unfortunate. But I’m here now.”, no matter how many times Kanon talked to Sakura, the village leaders presence scared the, compared to Oogami, rather small manager.  
“Oh, by the way-“, Kanon remembered she had a present for Sakura. She quickly searched her backpack, pulled out a thick envelope, and handed it to the leader.  
“What is that?”, Sakura took the envelope, analyzing it.  
“The pictures I took with my phone!”, Kanon did promise to get those printed.  
“Ah, I see.”, Sakura finally managed to open the envelope, “There are a lot.”  
“I took a lot of pictures after all.”  
“Thank you. I will keep them safe.”  
Sakura put the envelope in her sleeve. The same way she hid her temporary phone back when she was living with Aoi. Kanon waved the huge Sakura person goodbye and continued her walk. On her way to her destination, Kanon encountered other villagers. They embraced her with warm smiled, small waves, a “Hello!” and “How are you doing?” here and there. Kanon seemed to have gained a bit of popularity amongst the villagers. Well, it was partly her that rescued the village. She’s was pretty much a local hero and a symbol of the nice side of humanity.  
The manager arrived at the house she would stay in again for the next few weeks, months even. But before she could walk upstairs to the front entrance, two kids stopped her. One of the kids had bright red hair, that was a bit clashing with the green not-yet-bloomed flowers on his head, and tanned skin. Kinda looked like Leon, if he were a Sakura person. The other kid’s hair was strawberry blond, his skin pretty light.  
“Hey, you two!”, Kanon greeted.  
The red haired kid ellbowed his friend’s side, indicating that he should hand Kanon her gift over. It was a flowercrown made out of any flower +but Sakura flowers. The boys must have been in the forest to pick some spring flowers.  
“Aw, thank you so much!”, Kanon bowed down, so the kids were able to put the crown on her head. She hoped that this didn’t have a specific meaning to the magical creatures, that it only was decor. Maybe the children wanted her to fit in with this whole “flower-in-hair/on-head” thing.  
The kids ran off giggling, and Kanon was finally able to walk up to the door. She knocked three times and waited for someone to let her in.  
A few seconds passed until the door finally opened. It didn’t really matter which one of the two Hagakure’s opened the door, Kanon’s heart would skip a beat out of excitement anyway.  
“Kanon! Finally, yer back!”, it was Hiroko, clearly as excited as the human in front of her. They gave each other a tight welcome hug, Hiroko even patting the back of Kanon’s head, without ruining the flowercrown of course.  
“Come in, come in, I’m makin’ tea! Nice flowercrown by the way.”, the mother then basically pulled and pushed Kanon inside and closed the door.  
The ambassador put her luggage aside and sat down to relax a bit.  
“The tea smells really nice already.”, she complimented Hiroko.  
“Thanks!”


	16. Heartsick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that title is pretentious

A few moments later, the two women were sitting at the table, enjoying some cherry blossom tea.  
“... Isn’t that technically cannibalism?”, Kanon asked herself.  
“How was yer winter by the way?”, Hiroko interrupted Kanon’s weird thoughts.  
“Oof, where do i start...”  
She could tell the truth and let it all out. How she missed the village, especially her host family, and that that made her really depressed. On top of that, she realized how huge her crush was, considering that **he** gave her sleepless nights without being even **close** to her. Not to mention that she wasn’t able to be around other couples, including her brother-like-cousin and his fiancée, because that made her a sad and lovesick human being.  
But that would a) expose herself and b) probably make Hiroko want her to stay over the winters, even if she was the only one awake most of the time.  
So Kanon told Hiroko about basic human stuff she had been doing. Things, a Sakura person wouldn’t really understand what they were and how they functioned.  
The healer didn’t care. She liked to listen to Kanon’s stories she had to tell.  
“But I’m glad to be back, to be honest.”, Kanon confessed, “I missed you guys.”  
“Aw, we missed ya too.”, Hiroko smiled, “Especially Hiro.”  
“R-Really?!”, Kanon lost the ability to hide her feelings. At least when it came to Yasuhiro.

_“Ah, ya woke up before me.”_  
_“Hm...”_  
_“And yer set up winter dinner.”_  
_“Yeah...”_  
_Hiroko noticed her son wasn’t in the best mood. It was expected for him to be tired, of course, it was still winter. Her and Yasuhiro only woke up to get dinner and then go right back to sleep._  
_But still, even in winter, Yasuhiro’s mood was better than that._  
_“What’s the matter, sweetie?”, Hiroko asked while sitting down next to Hiro._  
_“I... I really miss Flowersound.”, Yasuhiro whispered sadly._  
_“She really caught yer attention, huh?”_  
_The son leaned his head on the table, almost completely hiding his face behind the layers and layers of sleeve fabric from his winter wear. His eyes were the only thing visible about his face, and that was enough to see his heartsick expression._  
_Hiroko interpreted that as a yes. He really missed Kanon. And so did the mother herself. But she missed Kanon a bit differently than Hiro did._  
_“What if she doesn’t come back?”, the ambassador muffled into his sleeves._  
_“No, no, no.”, Hiroko pat her sons head, “She’ll come back. Maybe not on the day yer wake up though. I’m sure yer fortune tellin’ tells ya the same.”_  
_“...”, Hiro didn’t answer immediately, “... I’m too tired for that.”_

“We talked about ya pretty much every time we were awake for winter dinner.”  
“He really thought I might not come back?”, Kanon asked with a worried tone in her voice.  
“I unterstand why he thought that. We already had someone disappear forever in our family. He just hoped, that it wouldn’t happen again with someone, who’s important to him.”  
“His father, right?”  
Hiroko silently nodded.  
“... You guys really don’t know what happened to him?”, the manager wondered.  
The mother let out a sigh.  
“I know what happened. And it’s not as tragic as ya might think it is. I never told Hiro because it would break his heart.”  
Kanon didn’t want to force the answer out of Hiroko. She just sat there and waited for Hiroko to continue the story by herself.  
“Ya don’t wanna know what happened?”  
“I-I don’t wanna force it!”, Kanon defended herself.  
The healer laughed for a second.  
“Y’know how I distrusted ya at first? Bein’ all defensive and stubborn?”, Hiroko asked. Her human housemate nodded.  
“It’s not because I thought yer were dangerous. I never thought humans were that. Well, until Haiji came with his machines that is.”  
“But what does this have to do with your... husband?”  
“No, we were too young to get married.”  
“Oh, okay.”  
“Ya’ll figure out in a second. But maybe I should start from the begginin’.”  
Kanon nodded in agreement.  
“So,-“, Hiroko started,”- I was an early bloomer. While my features were all pink ‘n’ stuff, and openly blooming, other kids my age were still green. Not even close to bloomin’. It happens sometimes. I usually spent time with people older than me, just because I didn’t fit in with the other kids. And this one guy started showing interest towards me.”  
“Yasuhiro’s dad.”  
“Exactly. We started spendin’ time together by ourselves, that developed into a relationship and one day Hiro was born. It was all good and happy, until one human found her way to our village.”  
Kanon was able to kinda guess where the story was going.  
“Hiro was always curious about humans. That’s somethin’ he got from his dad. Because that rotten flower decided to leave me for that human. He left an, at that time, three year old son behind.”  
The manager’s jaw dropped slightly. She felt really sorry for Hiroko.  
“I wasn’t able to tell Hiro the full truth. He loved his dad. So I just went with the basic “Oh no, humans did something terrible to him!”. It was the easiest way out.”  
“That’s why you hated humans so much.”  
“Not only that, but yeah, mostly. I was scared ya would take my son from me as well. Which yer kind of succeedin’ in, considerin’ how much he likes ya.”  
A blush crept up Kanon’s cheeks.  
“I-I wouldn’t take him away from you, Hiroko.”, she said, face bright red.  
“I know. I trust ya. Ya proved to me that not all humans are terrible bein’s.”  
“Thank you.”  
Hiroko emptied her cup of tea and walked towards a sink. Well, that’s what the contraption looked like to Kanon.  
“Speaking of Yasu-“, the human tried to get the mothers attention, “-where is he?”  
“Doin’ some ambassador stuff. At least that’s what he told me.”, Hiroko explained.  
“He’s confident enough to do that?”, Kanon wasn’t shocked. It was quite the opposite actually. She was proud.  
“Yeah! Well, I think he said he’d do somethin’ simple he just **can’t** mess up. He probably is just checkin’ up on the committee members. And maybe talkin’ to Sakura.”  
“It’s something!”  
“It is, yeah!”, Hiroko was obviously proud herself. Of course, it was her son they were talking about.  
“Maybe we can check up on him, to see how he’s doing.”, Kanon suggested. She didn’t want to check if he’s doing a good job, she trusted Hiro enough for him to be a competent ambassador. She just wanted to see him again as fast as possible.  
“Sure, yeah.”, Hiroko agreed, “I just don’t know where he is exactly. But we should be able to find him.”  
“You can’t miss that hair.”, Kanon joked.  
“Hehe, true. It was always a hassle to take care of that.”, Hiroko laughed while cleaning the cups.  
“Nice! Let’s go then!”, the manager was ready to storm out, noticeable by how fast she stood up from her seat, and find the person she missed the most. But Hiroko had something else in mind.  
“Wait, before we go, Sakura left something for ya.”, Hiroko left the main room for a moment, only to come back with a small package in her arms. She handed it to Kanon. The paper that was used to pack whatever’s inside, was very carefully folded and delicately painted, probably by hand, although it was a quite simple (and obvious) motif. Sakura petals. Good thing it was held together with some sort of string, otherwise Kanon would have felt bad ruining the paper by ripping off tape. She opened the ribbon and let the paper unfold itself. Kanon gasped upon realizing what the present for her was.  
“A robe!”, Kanon grabbed the piece of clothing by its shoulder parts and lifted it up, so she was able to properly inspect it, “It’s really pretty!”  
“Put it on then!”, Hiroko encouraged her guest.  
Kanon quickly took off her cardigan she had been wearing, and threw on the kimono robe. It was quite long, not as long as Hiroko’s, but it went to the manager’s ankles at least. The kimono itself wasn’t as bright pink as the villagers wear, it was lighter, almost pastel pink, with white embroidery on the back.  
“Wait, I didn’t really see the backside-“, Kanon was about to take off the robe again.  
“It’s the sound of flowers.”, the healer stopped the manager from taking her present off, even fixing it up to make it fit nicely on Kanon’s body, “Matches yer flower crown.”


	17. Reunited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ..Yeah I completely forgot to write this fanfic because I was caught up with a different one. Explains the shortness too.

The two women left the small house and took a walk through the village. A small spring breeze rushed through, carrying some already fallen sakura leaves.  
“God, I really missed to be here.”, Kanon took a deep breath of fresh air. Hiroko only smiled at that statement.  
There wasn’t much verbal exchange going on between the two, they just seemed to enjoy the beautiful day for a bit, while looking for Yasuhiro. Wherever he might have been.  
The village wasn’t that big. Well, when measured by number of people that lived there. It did have some fields for wheat, corn and other edible plants, and a small river, that split into smaller streams, passing by and through as well. But those weren’t places an ambassador needed to be.  
And yet, here were the two housemates, not being able to find the third one.  
They reached the temple, basically the last chance where Hiro might have been.  
“Hey Sakura!”, Hiroko greeted once she had spotted a huge figure, watching and guiding the rebuilding of the temple.  
“Hello Hagakure.”, the village leader took a short break to greet Hiroko and Kanon properly.   
“Ah, I see you gave Nakajima our present.”  
“I love it, thank you so much!”, Kanon bowed a bit, to show her gratitude.  
“I am glad you found a liking to it. We would have made more, but the temple is our top priority right now.”  
“A-ah, I’m fine with one!”, Kanon didn’t want to leave Oogami with extra work, considering that the robe looked like it was a lot to make, especially the embroidery on the back. It was probably hand stitched too, since Sakura people didn’t have any sort of machinery.  
“No, no. We insist. You are a part of our village now.”  
“Oh, wow...!”, Kanon’s face turned slightly red, “Th-Thanks!”  
“By the way, Sakura,-“, Hiroko interfered, “-have ya seen my son by any chance?”  
“He was here earlier. He helped with the temple a bit and talked to the current entrance-keepers.”  
That was more than Kanon expected. He must have had a confidence boost while hibernating.  
That didn’t help her and Hiroko to actually find Yasuhiro though.  
“Did he tell you where he went afterwards?”  
“I saw him walking towards the fields, to Bandai.”  
“Ah! I know where he is!”, Hiroko turned around halfway, “Thanks, Sakura!”, she then started walking back.  
“Hiroko, wait!”, Kanon waved the leader goodbye and ran after Hiroko.  
“Where are you going?”, the manager asked once she caught up.  
“Back home.”  
“Wait, did we miss him or what...?”  
“Maybe. Or maybe not. But I’m sure he’ll come home pretty soon, if he’s not already.”  
“How do you know?”  
“We ran out of bird food earlier.”

The women reached the small house they had left earlier, entering it right away.  
“Wait here.”, Hiroko told Kanon before she went outside the door that led to the chicken like creatures.  
It took a few minutes until the door opened again, but this time it wasn’t Hiroko who entered the home.  
There were no words. Just smiling, giggling, lots of hugging.  
Kanon tried to not cry tears of joy, but she wasn’t able to hold it back for much longer. She cried so violently, that she started hiccuping against Yasuhiro’s chest.  
“Ah, Flowersound! Are ya alright?!”, he panicked.  
“I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!”, she screamed, which was muffled by her face being pressed in the taller ones shoulder.  
That made Hiro tear up as well. He didn’t cry yet. But he might if Kanon didn’t stop anytime soon.  
“I missed ya too...”, he whispered, “But please come down, otherwise I’m gonna cry too.”  
Kanon loosened the hug to be able to look Hiro in his face with her own, tear drenched, sniffling face.  
“...”, he tried holding the tears back but it didn’t work.  
“HA! GOT’CHU!”, Kanon cheered, her eyes still red and puffy.  
“Yer mean!”, the Sakura person pouted.  
Kanon cupped Hiro’s cheeks and wiped away his tears with her thumbs.  
“I was really scared ya might not come back...”, Hiros suddenly admitted.  
“Yeah, your mom already told me that.”  
The two broke the hug, slowly calming down from the happy crying.  
“She, and Sakura, also told me that you did some work on your own.”, the manager smiled.  
“Ah! Yeah, I did!”, the male proudly smiled, “I mean, I didn’t do a lot yet, but, y’know...”, he fidgeted with his fingers, “It’s a start. Plus I’ve been awake for two days only, winter still sits on my shoulders a bit.”  
“From what I’ve been told, you did quite a bit. I’m proud.”  
Kanon could have sworn that Hiro’s face basically started glowing when she told him that she was proud. Maybe she never noticed that before, but it seemed like that’s the way Sakura people blushed.  
It did look super adorable to the human.  
“I’m- I’m really glad yer back.”, Hiro shyly smiled.  
“I’m glad to be back.”, Kanon smiled back.  
“Oh! Hold on!”, Yasuhiro suddenly jumped a bit before circling around Kanon, “Yer wearin’ the robe!”  
“Ah, yeah! Hiroko gave it to me earlier.”  
“It turns out better than expected!”, Yasuhiro positioned himself in front of Kanon again.  
“Wait, what?”

_“Let’s hope she’s awake...”, Hiro slowly wandered through the village, towards the temple._  
_It was the second day of hibernation, for Hiro at least, he was using his time, he’d usually spent eating dinner with his mom, to talk to the village leader._  
_Sakura and her family usually lived in the temple. But considering it’s state, that wasn’t a possibility. But they found shelter in the houses nearby. Other than that, the Oogami family was the last one to go to sleep. The chances were good that they’re still awake._  
_“A-Ah...”, he spotted the huge figure in the distance, doing some small work at the temple, “Oogami...!”, he tried yelling, but he was too tired. It was still loud enough to be heard._  
_“Hagakure?”, Sakura quickly power jumped towards Yasuhiro, to save him the way._  
_“You are clearly in the middle of hibernation.”, she grabbed his shoulders for support._  
_“It’s only day two, no-“, he yawned, “-need to stress.”_  
_“Did you eat?”_  
_Hiro nodded slightly._  
_“At least. What is the matter?”_  
_“Okay so-“, Hiro rubbed his eyes, “-I wanted to wait for Flowersound to fall asleep, but humans don’t hibernate.”_  
_“Did she go home?”_  
_“Y-yeah...”, it clearly saddened Hiro that Kanon had to leave, “But that’s not the reason why I’m...”, he almost fell asleep again._  
_“Hagakure!”_  
_“HUH?”; his head shot back up, his eyes were halfway open._  
_“Your matter, please.”_  
_“Oh, right, right. Can we make a robe for Flowersound?”_

“You requested it?”, Kanon wanted to cry again.  
“Yeah! Well, I fell asleep before Sakura could give me an answer, but apparently she accepted my request!”  
“You’re so sweet! Thank you!”  
Hiro’s face lit up again a bit.  
“I- uh-“, he stumbled on his words, “No problem... Ya look really pretty.”  
“... What are ya two standin’ around?”, it was Hiroko, who came back from feeding the birds, “I expected ya t’be cryin’ and laughin’.”  
“You just missed that.”, the two ambassadors said at the same time.


	18. Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so *technically* this is the last chapter of the main story, meaning I'm done with this fanfic, BUT I will add a new bonus chapter every now and then that is basically cute YasuKanon shenanigans, Sakura people learning more about human culture and vice versa. That means I wont update weekly anymore (because that worked all the time lol). I've also added a few more lines to the last chapter, so yeah.  
> Thanks for reading the main story to my Sakura Petal AU and I hope you'll stay for the bonus chapters!

It was late, the sun had set a few hours ago, the skies were clear, starts twinkling.  
Yasuhiro had the idea to take a late night spring walk with Kanon. Hiroko already went to sleep. So did most of the village, except for those, who volunteered to work at the temple over night, so it’d be rebuilt faster.  
“How long do ya think this will take?”, Yasuhiro asked the human.  
“With that speed it should be done this year. But it’ll still take a good seven to eight months.”, Kanon answered.  
“That’s good to hear.”, Hiro smiled, “Keep up the good work!”, he then cheered on the workers.  
“Let’s go somewhere else!”, the Sakura creature grabbed the manager by her wrist and dragged her away from the building site.  
“Where are you taking me?”, Kanon asked out of curiosity.  
“Ya’ll see.”  
Yasuhiro brought her to a place that was a bit further away from the not-so-secret-anymore place. A small spot at the river that entered, went through, and left the village.  
Hiro had his feet dangling in the probably very cold river water.  
“Aren’t you freezing?”, Kanon was clearly concerned.  
“Not really. This is really refreshin’. Try it!”  
“N-no thanks, I don’t feel like catching a cold.”  
“How do ya catch a temperature?”  
“You don’t know what a cold is?”  
Yasuhiro shook his head.  
“It’s like, uhm, your head hurts, and you feel dizzy, have a runny nose, all of that stuff. Sometimes you have extreme fever.”  
“And that’s...?”  
“When you feel really hot but cold at the same time.”  
“Oh! Now I know what that is!”, Hiro exclaimed, “We get that too! But we only call it bein’ sick.”  
“Yeah, I was surprised like, you guys get sick too sometimes, right? That’s what you got healers for.”  
“Exactly.”  
The two of them remained quiet after the small chit chat. The splashing against rocks and Hiro‘s feet rushed through the quiet surroundings. A small wind rustled the freshly grown leaves hanging from the trees.  
Yasuhiro leaned back, laying down on the slightly moist grass beneath him, head resting on his arms.  
“Does anyone else know about this spot?”, Kanon asked out of nowhere.  
“Probably, I dunno.”, Hiro shrugged, “I found it when I was younger while runnin’ around in the forest.”  
“Where you even allowed to be in the forest.”  
“Nope.”  
“So you were a little rebel.”, Kanon laughed.  
“Heh, ya could say that.”, Hiro joined the laughter, “Or I was curious.”  
“How many humans did you meet in the past?”  
“Believe it or not, Leon was the first human I’ve ever met.”  
“For real?”  
“Mhm. And then I’ve met ya.”  
“And then?”  
“No one, really. I’ve seen two humans in a day, that was enough for me. My dream was fulfilled.”  
“It was your dream to meet humans?”  
“Yup.”  
“...”, Kanon took a small breath, “What’s your dream now?”, she quietly asks.  
Yasuhiro didn’t answer right away. He gulped.  
“D-do ya really wanna know?”  
“That’s why I asked.”, Kanon looked over her shoulder to face Yasuhiro.  
“Heh...”, the Sakura person laughed nervously.  
“You wanna know what my dream was?”, the manager looked up to the star filled sky.  
“W-What is it?”  
“I never wanted to be alone again.”, Kanon admitted.  
Hiro sat up, looking at Kanon with a questioning look on his face.  
“Over the past winter I realized how lonely I was.”, Kanon started to explain, “I live in a huge house that is meant for a family of five. What for? I’m alone!”  
Hiro’s gaze wandered to the flowing river.  
“Yer not-“  
“I never had a lot of friends either. There was a reason why I played hide and seek with Leon back then. Cuz... he was my only friend.”  
“I’m-“  
“You make me really happy, Yasu.”  
“Huh-?!”, Yasuhiro’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped slightly.  
“You don’t make me feel lonely anymore. My dream came true.”  
“... What’s yer current dream?”  
Kanon looked to her right. Hiro noticed in the corner of his eye, he turned his head to face his company. His nervousness made his eyes move around, not wanting to meet Kanons eyes. But no matter how much his subconscious tried to avoid the golden shimmer, his eyes kept jumping back to the humans ones.  
“For it to remain like that.”, Kanon then confessed.  
Hiro’s cheeks were starting to glow aggressively.  
“Holy shit, are you okay?!”, Kanon panicked.  
“A-Ah, yeah, yeah!”, the magical creature tried to hide his face behind his hands, to no avail, “I’m- I’m fine-!”  
“Are you sure? I’ve seen your face glowing before, but not that bright!”  
“Cuz I don’t usually glow that bright!”  
Kanon gave Hiro a few moments to calm down. It took longer than she wanted to wait though. She grabbed the hobby fortune tellers wrists and removed his hand from his face. Cheeks were still glowing, but not as bright as before.  
Kanon didn’t let go, which made Yasuhiro notice how cold her hands actually were.  
“Yer freezin’ cold!”, he exclaimed, “Let’s bring ya back!”  
He quickly got his feet out of the water, wanting to stand up, but Kanon stopped him from doing so by holding on to his wrists.  
“I’m not that cold.”, she gently pulled him back down, “It’s just my hands.”  
“O-oh.”, Hiro sat back down again, “I just... didn’t want ya to catch a cold...”  
“You didn’t even know what a cold was, like, twenty minutes ago.”  
“Ya made it sound like humans catch cold quite easy! That’s why I wanted t’bring ya back home. I was worried.”  
Good thing humans didn’t glow, no matter the circumstance. Otherwise Kanon would have revealed her bright red cheeks, which she didn’t have from any sickness whatsoever.  
“Thanks.”, she smiled.  
It took both of them a while to realize that Kanon still had her companies wrists in her hands. Her hands had warmed up by now, however, she didn’t feel like letting go. It was quite the opposite actually. She slowly let her hands wander down the back of Hiro’s hands, only to let her fingers intertwine with his.  
“You... still haven’t told me your dream.”, Kanon noted.  
“...”, Yasuhiro gripped a bit tighter for a second, not to a point where it hurt, but that it was noticeable, “I-I don’t really know how t’say it. It’s like I want ya to be by my side. I wanna be there for ya. And just... I dunno. I dunno how to put it to words.”  
Kanon decided to make things easier for Yasuhiro.  
“... Do you love me?”, she asked quietly.  
“A lot.”, was Hiro’s immediate response. His face had gained some more glow again.  
“I guess ya could say my dream is for ya t’love me the same.”  
“Consider that dream to be true.”


End file.
